Improving Workplace Safety, Performance and Training through video

How to make New Workplace Behaviours Contagious

Written on November 7, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in getting staff to change, getting staff to follow a new initiative, persuading staff to change

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In the 70s, pet rocks were a fad that spread contagiously throughout the world.

Imagine that you’ve launched a new company initiative, but the transition has been quite bumpy. You calculate that 60% of staff are doing the new behaviour correctly, but you want 100% compliance.

Rather than getting despondent or even angry at your fellow workers, it’s now time to get out all the tools hidden away in your persuasion toolbox and get everyone on the right path.

Let’s step through what to do based on the Switch framework for change.

Using your Persuasion Toolbox

Follow the bright spots - The most important first step is to investigate what is working. Who is doing it right and why? Shadow those who have migrated across to the new behaviour to discover what it is they are doing well. Have they streamlined the process? Are they motivated by fear? Work out what they are doing and clone it. Remember, by focusing on the positives, you will get more positive results, than if you were to focus on the negatives (which coincidentally, gives you more negative results).
Change the environment – What often looks like a people problem can actually be a situation problem. By following superstars, you might discover that people aren’t submitting their reports on time because they are not sure how to collect some of the information (and superstars have an easier method). Rather than make the process hard, what can you re-engineer so that staff can access the information easily? Can you have a page on your intranet that centralises data that people can include for their reports?
Script the critical moves - Once you have discovered your superstar workers who have transitioned to the new behaviour, write clear instructions on how they are achieving success. Let everyone know in as few steps as possible what they need to do. Make it easy and try to build it into a habit.
Communicate your successes – Humans look to others to see what behaviour is the right one. Build on this, by publishing who is getting the right results or doing the right thing. Paint them as a hero. Write a case study in your newsletter about how Sue from accounts manages to submit her weekly report each week without fail. End it with clear instructions on the steps she takes for success. Another option is handing out awards to your super stars in public.
Communicate the Collective Goal – Assuming that you goal wasn’t clear enough, re-word it. Try and give it a nickname. For example: Say you goal is to submit “50 reports in 50 days” you could make it catchy by saying “50 to 50″. Organise as many visuals of the goal as you can. Get creative (use screen savers, posters, have visual reminders of how close you are getting to reach the goal, organise printed pocket sized cards etc). Get everyone on-board by appealing to their group identity. Make everyone feel part of a team. For example: rally the troops in a speech using inclusive language. ”Come on, guys, we’re production people we’re good at doing things fast!’ or “Come on every-one, we’re XYZers the best company in our industry, as a leader in our field we can do better than this!”
Using the Power of Small Wins – Ever used a loyalty card where, for example, if you buy 10 coffees you get one free? Research has found that people are more likely to use a loyalty card if one coffee has already been stamped, so you only have nine to go. However, if people are given a loyalty card with no stamps, they are less likely to use it. One way to motivate people is to make them feel that they are closer to the finish line than they thought. In what ways can you let the team know that they are already on their way? How can you pre-stamp their coffee card, so to speak?
Do a regular public review – Depending on how quickly you get results, do a weekly or monthly review meeting where you publish the results you are getting. Make it clear to everyone that most of the group is doing the right thing. By publicizing the group norm, you are saying “This is what every-one else is doing. By submitting the reports late, you are letting the team down”.

By following these seven steps, you’ll find launching a new initiative a piece of cake.

How finding company bright spots brings success

Written on October 31, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in finding company bright spots, focussing on company positives, following what works, launching a new safety initiative

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Following the path to company bright spots is a smart strategy

Since we were little, the majority of us have been taught to look out for what is going wrong and fix the problem. This can be for anything from getting an “E” at school to having friendship issues.

While this might work for basic problems (such as why isn’t my car working?) for more complicated ones we need to look at changing our mindset.

According to the Law of Attraction ” I attract to myself, whatever I give my focus, attention, or energy to; whether wanted or unwanted”, if you look for problems and focus on them. Guess what? You’re just exemplifying them.

Rather than looking for problems or negatives, we actually need to put our focus on what is working (or positives). We need to investigate our successes just as thoroughly as we investigate our failures (see Why your Good Safety Record Actually Sucks).

According to Chip and Dan Heath from the book Switch, in tough times we see problems everywhere (and let’s face it, there are some people who see negatives even in good times). To make progress, discovering what is working can help solve your problem. By finding what is working and cloning it, you can start to direct people on what to do and how to get there.

Let’s take a look at a business example.

Finding safety bright spots

Say you launch an initiative within your company that says that everyone must wear safety glasses at all times. However, when you visit some of your sites, you realise that only 65% of workers are doing the right thing.

The most common approach would be to send an email around asking people to immediately wear the safety glasses, tell everyone how important it is and possibly add a few words to let them know you’re not happy. A few legal reasons might be thrown around as well.

As we all know, such communication can provide mixed results. Even worse, it can backfire, with even less people wearing safety glasses during the next impromptu site visit.

So what to do?

Discover what’s working

Flickr: Waytru

This is where you need to find out who is wearing safety glasses all the time. Where do you have the highest compliance rate and why? Then, effort needs to be spend asking those who are complying, why are they doing it? What makes them want to do it?

You might uncover that they have made it part of their routine. Every time they clock on the next thing they do is put their glasses on. Or it might be that they know someone who got a terrible eye injury and they don’t what that to happen to them.

With that information, you would instruct everyone to put their glasses on as soon as they clock in. You might even have safety glasses readily available at the clocking in machine. Further, you’d bring someone in to talk to staff about how their eye injury affected them or create a training video that has such a person talking about their experience.

The beauty with this way of thinking is that it stops us on focusing on what is going wrong, which if you believe in the Law of Attraction, just brings us more ‘wrong’ and instead, shifts our focus on what is going right.

Rather than obsessing about why staff aren’t listening to you or madly trying to work out what approach to take, all you need to focus on is “What’s working and how can we do more of it?”

Six Secret Principles to an Effective Workplace Safety Campaign

Written on October 24, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in communicating OHS messages, using stories in the workplace, workplace safety campaign, workplace safety communication

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In the brilliant book, Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, they discussed a 1999 research project by a team of Israeli researchers. In this study, 200 award winning ads were classified into six templates.

They then classified 200 unsuccessful ads and found that only 2% could be classified into the six templates.

But wait there’s more…

The researchers brought in three groups of novices and got them to create three ads for three different products. The first group received information on the products and no ad design training. The second group was trained for two hours by a creativity instructor, while the third group was trained for two hours on the six templates.

For all groups, the best best ads were selected by a creative director and tested with consumers.

The group that was trained on the six templates was the clear winner with a 55% more positive attitude rating towards the product advertised and also rated 50% more for creativity by consumers.

The Six Secret Advertising Principles

Based on the research study, the Heath Brothers came up with six advertising principles. These can also be used to powerfully transform your safety communication to improve message recall and understanding. Here is a list of the SUCCES principles:

Simple – Use simple and easy to understand language. Only communicate one core message and make it as short as possible. Avoid decision paralysis where the more information a person is given, the harder it is for them to make a decision. Think metaphors and proverbs that contain highly informative information in a bite-sized take away.

Unexpected – Common sense is the enemy of sticky communication. When our brain’s guessing machine fails, it wants to work out why it was unable to guess. This surprise grabs our attention, so that we can be prepared in the future. By trying to work out what went wrong, our brain is more likely to remember the information. A good example is the Enclave television ad.

Concrete – Information that is communicated with lots of words to describe say, a process, is called abstract. The information can be difficult for novices to understand. To help people understand the information you need to make it more real-life or concrete. Give real world examples, make comparisons to other similar things that people will understand, use visuals to explain such as photos, video and diagrams.

For example: A successful campaign that was undertaken to educate people about the high levels of saturated fat in movie popcorn was to compare the saturated fat content of a bag of popcorn as being equal to two big Macs. Telling people that they are eating 37g of saturated fat is abstract and has no real meaning, unless you’re a dietician. Instead, talk in a language that people can understand, which in this case was comparing the fat content to a well known high fat product.

Credibility – In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini talks about social proof. One way humans determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. In particular, we view behaviour as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it. Having credible spokespeople is important in any safety campaign. These can be anti-heros who have been injured by an unsafe practices that are better at motivating staff to change than senior management. After all, they’ve experienced first hand the consequences of poor safety and can talk about how it affected their life. Viewers will look to the spokesperson to model their own behaviour.

Emotional – Despite economists wanting to believe that we make logical, unemotional decisions, the truth is hitting people’s emotions is important for change. Giving people analytical, logical reasons to stay safe aren’t always effective. Put emotion into your communication. Make people care. It can be as simple as talking about a person affected by poor safety. Humanise it.

Story – This leads us to using stories to communicate your messages. Stories are tremendously powerful and help provide an emotional connection to information. They are especially useful when your audience is resistant to change or in denial about the safety issues. Become a story finder in your company.

Sometimes you can’t include all of these in your communication, but the more you can include the better.

The most powerful way is to get a credible spokesperson telling their story which covers three principles (eg: Credibility, Emotional, Story).

How can you start to incorporate more of these principles into your communication?

The secret behind consistent workplace training

Written on October 18, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in improving consistency in workplace, inconsistent training issues, workplace training materials

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Many companies often get frustrated about how their workplace training is inconsistent from site to site, despite trainers using the same training materials.

Regardless of all good intentions, company trainers tend to deliver the content differently resulting in staff being taught variations in how to do something. This can be extremely frustrating for managers who end up with confused staff and an unproductive workplace.

But even more importantly, keeping strict version control on your PowerPoint training presentations and ensuring that your trainers are all teaching the same thing is a legislative requirement. If a death were to occur at your company site, the coronial inquest would request that the training materials used on the day the person was inducted and trained be submitted for review. If there is evidence that the PowerPoint version was open and anyone could change it or that the trainer did their own version of training, then that company would be found to be non-compliant training wise.

With the new OHS harmonisation laws arriving, it’s important that companies begin to have strict version control over their training materials.

The good news is that there is a way to reduce inconsistent training practices in your company that also ensure the best training outcomes.

It involves centring the workplace training around an engaging training video and producing a complementary trainer’s manual and employee handbook.

Research has found that the most engaging methods of safety training are, on average, approximately three times more effective than the least engaging methods in promoting knowledge and skill acquisition, as well as reducing accidents,illnesses, and injuries.

One of the main benefits with this type of workplace training is that it incorporates highly active training in its design, which can then be rolled out to other company trainers across your company.

Here’s how it works.

1. An engaging training video is created that is broken down into different chapters or learning menus. This enables the trainer to play a segment and then discuss afterwards and undertake further activities. See the menu sample below.

2. A trainer’s manual is produced that contains relevant content from the training video and has learning activities for the trainer to use. This is where you can includes lots of active training activities that include demonstrations, multisensory training (activities that use as many senses as possible), coaching activities and questions to ask. It also includes a session plan, so that trainer knows how to plan the entire training lesson. Ideally, it also includes assessment questions and answers.

3. Employees are also given an handbook, which contains information about each procedure, as well as similar photos and diagrams that they would have seen in the training video. A quiz can be contained in the booklet with a tear off page for them to hand to the trainer. Trainees go through their handbook during training and get to keep it. In our experience, they like to keep their booklet in their locker or drawer to refer to when there is any confusion when doing a task.

These training materials make it very difficult for a trainer to give information that is different to the course material. This means that staff get consistent training, but also highly visual and active training. It also means that the company has strict version control with its training materials that meet legislative requirements.

Trainers love the package because because all the hard work has been done for them. All they have to do is to convincingly teach the information and help trainees with their questions and coach them on ways to improve.

How to Design your next Safety Campaign

Written on October 14, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in designing a safety campaign, health and safety messages, how to communicate workplace safety messages, improving workplace communication, workplace safety communication

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Be careful of those stairs!

Now that you have worked out your topic for your next routine workplace safety campaign, it’s time to sit down and start writing. Here are some tips that have been designed for routine workplace communication initiatives (and not for large safety communication programs that require a lot of change, for large scale initiatives go to “14 Tips to Launch a New Safety Initiative”).

1. Work out your main communication objective and your audience. Keep yourself focused on what your are communicating about and who to. Work out your key goals and keep these in your mind while designing your campaign (check your safety figures to see what issues you might be having that needs to be addressed). Get out a picture or a photo of the person who represents your target audience. Master communicators find it very useful and inspiring to look at these photos, while trying to come up with the right wording. You can even label them and refer to them affectionately, as “Cam the Construction Man” or “Patty the Packer”.

2. Research your topic – Find as much information as you can about the topic and look for interesting facts and figures. What can you say that topic that’s unexpected or different? How can you break a pattern and get people’s attention? Use this information to write your headline. But make sure you develop one core message. Often, it’s tempting to believe we have lots to say and we feel that we need to talk about everything around that topic to communicate safety. Yet, research has proven that too many messages confuse people. Write your communication with one clear message in mind. Every time you add content question whether it is part of your core message. Remember, simple clear messages are easy for people to understand and recall. Steve Jobs was a master of the core message in each of his famous Apple presentations. Think “1000 songs in your pocket” for the iPod.

3. Keep your writing short – Once the brain has to work hard at what communication is trying to say, it begins to lose interest. Always ensure your communication is clear and people don’t need to work at deciphering the information. Use short words (5 characters or less), sentences (17 words or less) and even paragraphs. Be friends with white space avoiding cramming lots of text into your communication. Write at the reading level of a high school student. And use positive language.

4. Write the announcement – Now that you’ve done some research and you’ve honed your writing skills, it’s time to get writing. Remember, how can you make the headline interesting? What can you say that is counter-intuitive to the message? Common sense will not get you noticed. What interesting facts do you have about the safety focus that will grab people’s attention? Use the funnel method of writing where you explain your core message in your first paragraph (what, when, why, how where) and then write your medium important information in the next paragraph, followed by the third important information etc. Avoid giving lots of details in the first paragraph. Instead, make the first paragraph interesting, so that it draws people into the detailed information (but not necessarily the most important information).

Here’s an example in relation to slips, trips and falls:

Falling Down Stairs kills more people than Sharks

Did you know that you’re more likely to injure yourself by falling down stairs than by being attacked by a shark? Stairs represent a serious injury risk and are one of the most common causes of injury at the workplace.

And here at XYZ, they represent our most common form of injury. You can avoid falling down the stairs by:

Always having three points of contact
Avoiding talking or texting while going up or down the stairs
Ensuring that stairs are clear and are not used for storage of items.

5. Use lots of visuals – Humans recall and understand visual information much faster than words. And they grab our attention. Always include a photo or picture that best represents your information. Where possible, use human faces, as we are very drawn to looking at other people. Emotional imagery also is more likely to get people to change. Always consider including different colours, video, diagrams and pictures whenever you need to create high impact communication materials.

6. Repeat your message in many different ways – Advertisers know that for humans to even recall a television ad they need to see it at least six times. And the more they are exposed to the ad in different formats such as radio, bus posters and magazine ads, the better the results. With any campaign you create, you will also need to create a calendar of communication events. Ideally, you must plot out a different communication activity every week for the next 2 months with the same consistent message. Include posters, toolbox meetings, video content, personal letters from the General Manager, email newsletters, stickers and staff stories. Remember, frequency is key and using a variety of communication formats. Make sure all of the communication has the same consistent core message with matching visuals.

Writing safety communication information generally isn’t the most favourite job of a safety professional. Rather than approach safety communication in the usual fashion and producing mediocre results, use these tips to engage your staff and make communication fun.

Announcing Free Report: How to Improve the Induction Timing of your Training

Written on October 13, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in creating your induction training, inducting new staff, induction training, reducing induction training time, reducing staff induction training, reducing the time to train staff

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Time is precious. In most companies finding the time to train and allowing staff time for training is problematic. This new report provides key information on how to reduce induction training time and create flexible training that both improves training results, but also reduces training costs.

Melbourne, Australia – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new report “How to Improve the Timing of your Induction Training” to help safety, training and HR professionals get better results with their company inductions.

In many companies, time is precious. And finding the time to train is problematic. After all, how do you communicate all of the relevant issues to staff when time is limited?

Then, there is the issue of stressed out trainers constantly undertaking induction training on a daily basis. Organisations often worry about how to make their induction training more interesting and ensure consistent high quality training.

In this free report you will find out:

Three tips to reduce your induction training length.
How to grab trainee attention.
How to improve message retention and recall rates.
How to systemize your training for improved training outcomes.

Inductions are an important process that done right results in will reduce the start up costs involved with learning a new job, reduce injuries, improve talent retention and productivity.

Discover how you can have an engaging induction process for your organistion that will be most cost effective than your current system.

For a complete copy of the report, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/improving-induction-timing/

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos and workplace training packages. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos. For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross
Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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How to find the right stories for your company

Written on October 10, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in communicating core values, corporate stories, corporate story-telling

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Telling stories are a great way to create an emotional connection to information that gets people interested in what you are talking about, but more importantly helps them to remember your message.

Good leaders use corporate story-telling as a way to communicate the behaviour they require and how it needs to be done. It puts knowledge into a framework that helps staff understand how they are supposed to act.

But the art of spotting the right company stories can be hard. How do you know what stories to use? And which stories work well in which context?

Well, the good news is that there are learning templates that have been created on how to find the right story.

According to Dan and Chip Heath, from Made to Stick, there are three basic plot lines to look out for. These are: The Challenge Plot, the Connection Plot and the Creativity Plot.

The Challenge Plot

This is when the hero is up against an insurmountable challenge and wins. Think David and Goliath, the story line in the Australian movie The Castle and Erin Brockovitch.

There are different types of Challenge Plot: rags to riches (think Cinderella) and the triumph of sheer willpower over adversity (think of a sports team that was doing badly that won the final).

The special quality of challenge plots is that they inspire us to act. They encourage us to persevere and have courage in the face of adversity.

These story lines are ideal for companies that are doing it tough and need to rally the efforts of staff. Look out for staff who have battled a major illness or family issue, but have done amazing things at work or in the community despite the setbacks.

The Connection Plot

Includes storylines where people develop a relationship, despite their differences such as race, class, religion or other. Think Romeo and Juliet, Titanic and Avatar.

Connection plots are all about overcoming challenges and our relationships with other people.

Use these type of stories when working with overseas customers and to reduce racial hostility with staff. Look out for stories that involve staff working together despite their differences.

The Creativity Plot

Another type of storyline that you can use to inspire the troops is the Creativity plot. This involves a mental breakthrough, solving a puzzle or problem in an innovative way.

Think Macgyver or the apple that falls on Newton’s head.

Creativity plots make us want to do something different and experiment with new approaches.

These type of stories are perfect for when you need to reinvent the company culture and you want to show staff a new type of thinking or way of doing things. Be on the look out for staff testing different approaches to reach company goals. And use these examples as your stories.

Stories help people accept information in a non-judgmental way. They are ideal to use if you know the information you need to tell will elicit denial and a possible angry response. Or if nobody seems to care.

Done well they will create buy-in and springboard people to act.

To find the right company stories, you need to go out and find them. Be open to them and you’ll be surprised by what you might find.

How to work out your safety induction training content

Written on October 3, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in creating your induction training, how to create induction training, inducting new staff, inducting new workers, induction training, new starter inductions, safety training program

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So your company has finally decided to systemise your safety induction training and you’re in charge of sorting it all out.

Before we go into the actual safety training content, make sure that when designing your induction training you:

include a face to face component (eg: site tour, meet and greet),
have friendly, welcoming training (if you want to keep the new starter for a while, treat them really well),
include visually appealing training material to increase engagement.

For more information on how to design your training content, refer to some of the article links posted at the bottom of the post.

When designing your safety induction training program, there are some content items that you need to include. Here is a brief checklist to help you get started.

1. Introduction - it goes without saying, but surprisingly there are companies that launch straight into their induction training without providing adequate information to the new starter on what the company actually does. Remember, staff and contractors are walking, talking billboards for your company. Anytime they are at a family BBQ on the weekends, they should be out there telling people what your organisation does. Make sure they know what you do, why, how, where and when. (A little story – about 10 years ago we produced a marketing video for an engineering company. While the marketing video helped the company to educate and sell more of it’s complicated shipping products, the video also helped educate staff about what the company did. Amazingly, as most of the shipping equipment was so complicated around one third of the staff didn’t really know what the company made!)

2. Core Values (optional) – This section is really for induction training that is not safety related. If you are doing safety training, refer to ‘Your Safety Values’ below. Great companies spend a lot of time indoctrinating new staff into the company values and culture. Make sure you also explain what your company is about and your core values (read How to Engage Staff with your Core Values).

3. Your Safety Values – Senior leaders drive the safety culture of a company. This is where you really need to include senior members to talk about the importance of safety at your company. This needs to come from the heart. Make it friendly and personal. Remember, first impressions count!

4. Duty of Care – This is more of a legal nature, but always important to include with any safety training.

5. Site Safety Rules – Explain the main safety rules that you have. Make sure they are written in positive, friendly language. Refer to the safety principles example from CSR Viridian (above).

6. Personal Protective Clothing – Show people the different types of safety clothes that they need to wear and explain the reasons why.

7. Other specific safety information – Depending upon your site, go through specific information about emergency evacuation, incident and injury notification, traffic management, hazardous materials and so on. If you do not know the specific safety requirements, contact your local safety advisor or Government body. Remember, it’s important to demonstrate as many different aspects of safety information to help learners remember the information.

8. Summary – End your training in a friendly manner. Summarise your core message.

14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

Written on September 26, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in CEO workplace safety speech, getting workers to accept a new safety initiative, launching a new safety initiative, launching a new safety message

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Announcing: 14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

Promoting a new safety campaign to workers can often be difficult. This new presentation provides the key communication tips you need to undertake to make sure your new initiative is easily accepted by every-one in your company.

Melbourne, Australia (26 September, 2011) – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new presentation “14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative” to help senior leaders and safety professionals get better traction with their safety campaigns.

Humans are wired to resist change, but with the right techniques you can convince nay-sayers about the need to embrace a new safety program.

This visually appealing presentation addresses the need to plan your communication and provides details on how to prepare for your safety initiative launch. The report looks at:

Who you need to get involved before launch
What techniques to use during the launch to get buy-in
How you need to track your safety initiative post launch.

Change can be overwhelming to staff. Make the transition easier by having clear instructions on what staff need to do and how. And pretty soon, you’ll be able to introduce new safety initiatives with little resistance.

For a complete copy of the presentation, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/launching-new-safety-initiative/

About Digicast Productions

Contact Marie-Claire Ross
Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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How to avoid decision paralysis among your staff

Written on September 22, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in CEO workplace safety speech, communicating OHS messages, creating workplace change, decision paralysis, getting staff to accept change

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Too many choices makes us exhausted. Photo credit: Flickr, Ohdarling

It sounds counter intuitive but the more options you give staff, the harder it is for them to make a decision.

Multiple choices actually make us more likely to freeze in action and retreat to the status quo.

According to Chip and Dan Heath in the book, Switch, numerous choices induces Decision Paralysis. Choices can be deadly for change – because the most familiar path is always the status quo.

In fact, lots of choices can be exhausting. Ever spent a day shopping and felt exhausted at the end? It wasn’t just from all that walking. All of those choices literally makes your head spin. When it comes to company change, what often looks like laziness is actually, just exhaustion. Change is hard for people as it wears them out.

Leaders may pride themselves on setting high-level direction believing that they can state the goals and actions. However, big picture hands off leadership isn’t likely to lead in a change situation.

Change can be paralyzing because of all the details. Staff need to be directed into what they need to do. Called “scripting the critical moves”, leaders need to think of what behaviour changes are required and document these. For best impact, the new changes need to become part of a routine.

In “Switch”, the example was given of General Motors concerning new safety behaviour:

Everyone is required to wear hard side shields and safety glasses.
No-one can expose any bare skin (no shorts or short-sleeve shirts).

While in the book, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they said that to make ideas sticky, you need to work out the core. Too many messages, can be paralyzing for decision-making. In fact, psychologists have discovered that when there is too much complexity or uncertainty, people will make irrational decisions.

Having a core message reminds people of what’s important. For example at South West airlines, staff make all of their decisions based on the line “We are the low cost airline”. This helps employees make better decisions about what is right for customers and South West.

When trying to get your messages down into one core message, think of a proverb – it’s compact and core. One short sentence can pack tremendous wisdom.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

To err is human (To forgive divine)

So the bottom line here is that when creating a training program, marketing a new product or even selling an idea – you need to distill your message into one core message. The shorter the better. Because the more messages you have, the more confused people will get and they’ll end up resisting what you say.

Improving Workplace Safety, Performance and Training through video

Announcing: 14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

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