Change professionals! Produce on-brand creative contributions for greater impact
Jane has learned about pre-production from her advertising colleague and friend. Her friend in advertising coaches her about pre-production and how to systemise her creative work. Jane leads change for a system implementation. Her colleague supports a major soft drink client on their latest advertising campaign. Jane’s initial contact with her organisation’s marketing and brand communication team is fruitful. Conversations about brand compliance lead to more insights. These conversations illustrate the disciplines and systems used by internal marketing teams.
Jane consults the brand guidelines for her organisation, taking note of colours, fonts and logo positioning. Her time and effort on creative pre-production pay off.
She systemises her first-draft communications into a ‘playbook’ for her project team. Her change impact assessments and other planning artefacts link to her deliverables. Her ‘change system’ allows her to focus on more creative, attention-capturing approaches to her change work. Her time on creativity fuels images, slogans, and explainer video content. Jane again systemises her creative output, considering each work as an ‘asset’.
Jane’s creative digital assets are labelled with well-managed version control. She also learns of her organisation’s digital asset manager (DAM), and grabs a few useful digital assets from the DAM. Her brand compliance pays off later when she produces videos and collateral for her change. No pushbacks from anyone — no wraps on the knuckles about compliance either!
Operational teams working with Jane see how she has started her project on the right foot. She speaks the language of internal marketing and other operational teams. They appreciate how she respects their operating requirements and tempo, and is mindful of everyone’s time when she consults them. Jane doesn’t know it yet, but she will repurpose some of her creative assets to adjust to an unexpected pre go-live ‘plot twist’. Her project team commend her ability to pivot. Jane attributes these ‘wins’ to her pre-production efforts.
The aim of this article is two-fold. Translate smart, time-worn ideas from industries involved in ‘canned creativity’ and ‘mass influence’ for our change practice. Advertising professionals, including graphic designers, copywriters, animators and presentation experts can contribute ideas to uplift the change profession. What are two lessons?
- Remove audience headaches by getting our foundations right: brand-compliance.
- Systemising our creative change work, using the concept of pre-production.
First, do no harm: remove potential headaches
I haven’t even read your message yet, and I’m already annoyed
How can you use graphic design principles for compelling communications? Why worry about colour palettes and style guidelines? Many people are sensitive to fonts, text and logos. What are they sensitive to in these elements exactly? Suppose your reader has worked at their organisation for any amount of time. In that case, they will become used to their organisation’s fonts, brand-compliant colours, and logo version. They may be touchy about seemingly minor details like the position of your organisation’s logo on the page. Before even starting on specific messages, are these details correct?
I’m no stickler for detail for its own sake, but I have experienced the disappointment of losing my readers before they even get stuck into my message. I get a comical image in my head of a teacher returning my essay, with the first sentence marked up in red and with a big ‘FAIL’ on it! But the teacher hasn’t read my writing — I’m sure it was brilliant? When starting with a new client, I am to find out what their preferred brand-compliant templates are. What fonts, logos and other consistent detail work for them? This way, I haven’t ‘lost the race’ before I’m out of the starting blocks. So what other slight adjustments can we make to avoid getting our essay prematurely returned with an unfair ‘FAIL’?
Soothe my poor eyes
Sitting on a train one evening, I tuned into a YouTube presentation by David JP Phillips called ‘How to avoid death by PowerPoint’ ¹. I was a little sceptical. I’m pretty au fait with PowerPoint and like to think that I engage my audience. Twenty minutes later, it dawned on me that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. That’s not the first, nor the last time that realisation will happen to me. David spoke about six principles in a captivating, amusing — and memorable — way. These six principles help audiences absorb messages with greater ease. Slight adjustments in your PowerPoint technique — and a great return for your effort.
So what are David’s six principles? Here they are, although his presentation is worth watching for yourself:
- One message per slide (6 minutes, 20 seconds)
- Working memory — avoid text sentences, especially if you are saying the same words as the on-screen text (7 minutes, 20 seconds)
- Size — is the most important concept(s) on your page the largest? (8 minutes, 34 seconds)
- Contrast — how do you direct people’s gaze to points on your page? (10 minutes, 38 seconds)
- PowerPoint is not supposed to have white backgrounds (12 minutes, 25 seconds)
- Objects — what is the ideal number of objects you should have on screen (13 minutes, 45 seconds)
So how do David’s lessons reflect on your change practice? Tweak your PowerPoint or Google Slides content? Maybe. But let’s think of David’s principles broadly. It may give us pause to think about small tweaks to the change experience we provide our stakeholders. This includes message content, calls to action, chunking information in training and other service touch-points within our remit.
The most memorable part of his presentation for me? David’s humorous contrast of audiences sighing in relief from an easily-digestible message, versus a groan when confronted with too much information (16:35–17:05).
So, like me, aim to overturn your previously-held convictions and assumptions. Who would have thought of the power of a dark background when presenting to others? And your headline ISN’T the largest text on your slide? And how little effort have I made in using contrast to direct my audience’s attention? Humbling, but useful knowledge. How much extra thoughtfulness could I apply to the rest of my change practice? What headaches can we remove to help stakeholders absorb our message, and adjust to the changes we propose?
Your pre-production ‘pipeline’
Three helpful pre-production concepts
“Most failed projects reach that low point because a director began animating before answering three essential questions about the project: What is it ? What does it look like ? and What is it made of ? … Concept Development , Previsualization , and Asset Building.” — Liz Blazer, author of ‘Animated Storytelling’ ²
Pre-production. Doesn’t sound like fun, especially if you’re starting on a new project. But a pre-production mindset will pay off for change professionals. How can you systemise certain aspects of your change work? This systemisation can help your change planning. Lena Ross says that change professionals are ‘roadies, not rockstars.’ ³. Any roadie has considerable daily preparation work. Over time, I have little doubt that canny roadies develop their own ‘system’ to support their band. You probably have your own ‘system’ in place to support the change ‘rockstars’ you serve. Even so, we can learn from professionals who have systemised creativity.
Let’s now adapt Liz Blazer’s three points about pre-production to our change practice:
- Concept Development: What are your change objectives for your project’s go-live? Are these objectives agreed with your sponsor and other executives who will ‘inherit’ your future state? Can you break down your change objectives into measurable chunks, ideally in the form of behaviours? Working backwards from post go-live to today, what do you expect to be in place for your change goal to be realised? You may use change models to foster thinking about the messages and priorities throughout your project’s lifecycle. The PROSCI ADKAR ™ model ⁴ is one such model.
Pre-production thinking can apply to your change messages. In her book ‘Change Management: The Essentials’, Lena Ross covers a range of key messages below. Think again of your change goal. In light of this can you visualise what these key messages might convey? Can you create a repository containing a draft of each message? Can others in your project team access and update this repository?
“Key messages may include: • Business benefits — why we need to change • What will change • What remains the same • Milestones and timelines of key activity • Engagement forums — how people can get involved and have their say; any change readiness surveys that may be taking place; Q & A sessions; project showcases • Performance support that will be available after implementation • Benefits for the individual and for each team or stakeholder group — this is called the WIIFM, an abbreviation for ‘what’s in it for me’ • What will happen if we don’t embrace the change — the risks of not changing.” — Lena Ross ³
- Pre-visualisation: In practice, I sometimes use a single Google Document containing my entire ‘playbook’ of messages. Admittedly, I feel like my first draft is an excruciating process. So far, my first draft has never ventured beyond mediocre levels. But my mindset helps: someone needs to break the initial ground. Focusing on features, benefits and WIIFM tends to take my mind off the elusive words required to string them together! And Google Documents has a useful sharing mechanism for my team to add comments or edit our messages. That excruciating first draft evolves through co-creation.
- Asset Building: Your pre-production supports change deliverables like the messages mentioned above. Keeping these deliverables in one place, like I do, is but one approach. Or you can ‘tag’ or ‘code’ each deliverable. This idea is like internal marketing professionals who ‘tag’ digital assets like logos, corporate images and video footage. These assets live in a Digital Asset Manager (DAM) –a virtual library. The time you spend in organising your own ‘asset library’ tends to pay off just before go-live, when hours are long and the pressure is high. Now, where was that image with go-live message v5.2 stored again?
Adapting pre-production to leading change
Bear in mind that pre-production also involves timelines and people’s involvement. For each message, you will likely need at least one reviewer and approver. For training and knowledge materials, you may need subject matter expert access. These experts may deliver some or all of the training and supporting material. Who manages your organisation’s learning management system? Do you need access to it, or can someone publish your training course registration content for you? Will there be a formal ‘intake’ of your future state before go-live?
These time and resource questions should morph into a plan once you have answers. A simple spreadsheet can help you track each message, the corresponding reviewers and approvers. A change plan on a page can help you map the timings and engage certain people at various times. So when the manager of your ‘star’ subject matter expert approaches you, asking for a timeline of your star’s involvement in your change, how do you respond? A schedule covering the next several weeks to months ahead? Time commitments at predictable intervals?
You may not expect every request, and unforeseen requests will surface. But colleagues will appreciate your thorough thinking and effort to create a predictable meeting tempo! And the fewer surprises (unexpected time impositions) on others, all the better. The experts you seek to review/approve/develop and support your change work are probably in hot demand due to their competence. So schedules like this one are a part of viable pre-production work.
What parts of your change can you draft and produce now? What mid-project changes to scope or the final result might you expect? How can your pre-production help you adapt to these changes? For example, your message drafts may allude to the go-live timeframe. Perhaps not a specific date, but a broad timeframe. I tend to shade parts of my draft which are likely to change. These include dates, turns of phrase to describe features and benefits, and particular calls to action.
Recap
Phew! Creativity sure has much planning involved. Yet brand compliance and pre-production work can result in smoother approvals, quicker publication and a delighted audience.
Your call to action
How do you translate useful ideas from the advertising and graphic design industries and include these lessons in your change practice?
Striving to become a better change leader? Creative professionals like advertising gurus have much to teach anyone keen to be skilled in mass influence.
My book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out my online course on Change Management.
Reference List
1. Phillips DJP. How to avoid death By PowerPoint. TEDxStockholmSalon — YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwpi1Lm6dFo. Published 2014.
2. Blazer L. Animated Storytelling. Berkeley, United States: Pearson Education (US); 2015.
3. Ross L. Change Management: The Essentials: The Modern Playbook for New and Experienced Practitioners. Lena Ross; 2020.
4. ADKAR Change Management Model Overview | Prosci. https://www.prosci.com/adkar/adkar-model.