Description
Clarity, Leadership, Impact
This book is for people who want to change the world. Here’s the challenge: it’s impossible to change the world all by yourself. To have an impact, you need to communicate.
In these pages, we will share with you what we have each learned over 30 years as professional communicators – as writers, speakers, broadcasters, reporters, teachers and advisors to leaders of global organizations. We have distilled the essence of this knowledge into useful techniques and models that we teach in our communications courses all around the world. To this we add our insights from our intensive study of neuroscience. In the past two decades neuroscience has revealed much new information about how the brain processes information. Surprisingly little has been written about how to turn the theoretical insights of neuroscience into practical methods of effective communication. We believe we are the first communications professionals to put this together in one book.
You will find our focus on transformation quite different from others’. This is because we have specialized in organizations dedicated to making the world a better place. Our clients include UN and government agencies, multilateral development banks, think-and-do tanks, universities, environmental groups such as WWF, and scientific bodies like the Society of Conservation Biology. These organizations don’t exist to make money. They exist to create transformation. Whether taking action on Climate Change, helping to create jobs in poverty-stricken nations, changing policies that discriminate against women or explaining a recent breakthrough in fighting cancer, our clients take on big challenges. To succeed, they know they must communicate powerfully. They also know that credibility is their currency, so they have to be honest, transparent and authentic. For this reason our approach to communications is based on clarity, leadership and impact.
With each person we work with, our goal is to move him or her towards excellence, and in these pages we want to move you towards being the most effective and powerful communicator you can be. Why does this matter? You can have the finances, the human capital, the need and the logistics all in place. But if you fail to communicate why your work is important, you won’t get buy-in, you won’t get action and you won’t create the change you desire.
When it comes to communication, most professionals go wrong by focusing mostly on output and not much on impact. They think only about what they have to say or write, and very little about how their words will change their audiences’ minds. For example, we work with many research report authors who spend a year gathering data and compiling a myriad of facts into a 200-page document. Then they come to us to help prepare for “dissemination.” Typically, they allot a half-day for learning how to deliver their message. With a few exceptions, they mostly consider their job done when the report is approved and finalized. Going on a worldwide media tour seems like an afterthought. We wonder how these brilliant people believe their work is going to make any difference if they don’t dedicate themselves to promoting it and articulating their ideas on the world stage.
“We like to let the quality of our work speak for itself,” they tell us. It’s not easy for many experts and authors to accept our response: “Your work does not speak for itself. The world will only take notice if you are out there advocating for it.”
This book will give you the understanding and the tools you need to become powerful advocates for your cause and your organization. We want you to become a catalyst for transformation. We want you to know that you have the potential to change the world.