What should you do when internal communications go awry?

When employees don’t understand what’s going on — or don’t see how an initiative affects their daily work — the confusion can ripple through an entire organization. You’ll often see:

• Misalignment that keeps you from moving critical strategies forward
• Confusion and uncertainty, leading to decreased employee engagement
• Lower operational efficiency
• And, ultimately, loss of revenue

So what does it take to convey big ideas effectively? How can you avoid the repercussions of communicating poorly? And what does good messaging look like?

The power of a human-centered, visual communication model

It’s all about clarifying and humanizing your initiative through visual communications, storytelling, and interactive experiences that engage your team and advance your strategic objectives. This requires you to distill essential information into formats that are both accessible and memorable to particular audiences.

Here’s how Tremendousness can help you, too.

1. Identify and understand your audience

A big communication barrier is the tendency for leaders to assume that people think and process information similarly. This is known as the false consensus fallacy — assuming your audience is just like you, and that they have the same needs and expectations as you do.

To communicate successfully, you must overcome this fallacy and make sure you know what makes your audience tick. 

Engaging an objective partner like Tremendousness can help you get out of your own head and into the minds of your audience. We can help you move beyond surface-level assumptions to comprehend your people’s:

• Daily challenges
• Immediate priorities
• Potential barriers to understanding
• Obstacles to adopting new behaviors or mindsets
• Perspective on what success looks like

From there, we’ll work with you to identify the key messages your stakeholders need to know — and the best way to move them from where they are to where you want them to go. 

2. Translate (not just just simplify) key information

You may know exactly what you want to say. But if you don’t know how to say it in a way that your audience will understand, it doesn’t matter. That’s why you need a translator to help you get your messages across in ways that are truly compelling. 

This isn’t about dumbing down or oversimplifying the message. It’s about clarifying it and putting it into a framework that enables your audience to comprehend it. When you choose the right communication modality, you can demystify your complex message without losing meaning and nuance along the way. 

Visual communication is a particularly powerful way to do this. Interactive elements, video, infographics, storyboards, live sketching, and more offer an attention-grabbing alternative to text-heavy presentations. The human brain processes visual information exponentially faster than text. A well-designed infographic or strategic explanation video can communicate complex ideas more effectively than dozens of slides.

The problem is most leaders simply don’t use visual communication. Time and again, they rely on text-heavy formats rather than visual ones — often because, like most people, they don’t have the time or skills to create professional visual communications on their own.

3. Choose the right communication mix

Not all information is best communicated through the same format. Some messages are more powerful as:

• Engaging one-page infographics
• Short, strategic videos
• Interactive visualizations or web experiences
• Concise, well-designed presentations

And of course, some messages will need to be communicated in a variety of modalities in order to achieve your desired outcome. The medium should amplify your message, not constrain it. And a good strategic partner can help you choose and create the best vehicles for your needs.

Ready to embrace a human-centered communication model?

The most effective organizational communications do more than inform. They engage and inspire. And to succeed, your messages must resonate on a human level, spark understanding, and motivate action.

Poor communication doesn’t just sink meetings or annoy customers — it quietly drains morale, sabotages progress, and stalls momentum across the entire organization.

A partner like Tremendousness can help you move beyond traditional approaches and embrace the power of visual communication so you can transform how you connect with your most valuable asset: your people. And in so doing, you can ensure your next big idea becomes the impactful initiative you know it should be.

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Image: Photo by Reid Naaykens / Unsplash