I have watched brilliant transformation programs stall for one reason: nobody remembered the message. The strategy was sound. The technology worked. But the people it depended on could not tell you, in one sentence, what was changing or why it mattered to them.
After years leading AI and ERP change at Novartis, I have stopped blaming the audience. If the message did not land, that is on the sender. Communication is not a phase you run alongside the project. It is the project.
People do not remember information. They remember meaning.
You can send forty slides, six emails, and a town hall. None of it survives contact with a busy calendar. What survives is a single idea, repeated until it becomes shorthand.
So before I write anything, I force myself to answer one question: if this person remembers exactly one sentence next week, what should it be? If I cannot say it in one breath, the audience has no chance.
The five things that make a message stick
1. Clarity beats completeness
The instinct under pressure is to explain everything. Resist it. A message that covers 100% of the detail communicates 0% of the point. Say the one thing. Put the rest in an appendix nobody is forced to read.
I write the headline first, in plain language, as if explaining it to a colleague in the corridor. If it needs jargon to survive, it is not ready.
2. Repetition is not redundancy
Leaders get bored of their own message long before the organization has heard it once. That is the trap. By the time you are sick of saying it, most people are hearing it for the first time.
The rule I use: when you are tired of repeating the message, that is roughly when it starts to land.
Say the same core idea across weeks, in the same words. Consistency is what turns a message into a belief.
3. Answer "what's in it for me" before they ask
Every person receiving a change message runs the same silent calculation: does this help me, threaten me, or waste my time? If you do not answer that, they will answer it for you, usually with the least generous option.
Translate the strategy into their reality. Not "we are consolidating our ERP platform," but "you will stop re-entering the same data in three systems." Speak to the desk, not the boardroom.
4. Match the message to the channel
Not every message deserves an email, and email is where nuance goes to die. I think in terms of fit:
- Complex or emotional news belongs in a live conversation, where people can react and ask.
- Decisions and commitments belong in writing, so they are stable and searchable.
- Momentum and small wins belong in short, frequent, informal touches.
The channel is part of the message. Announcing a layoff by memo says something the words never could.
5. Wrap the fact in a story
A number tells people what happened. A story tells them what it means. When I want a change to feel real, I do not lead with the metric. I lead with one person whose day got better, then show the metric behind it.
Stories are portable. People repeat them at lunch. A well-chosen story does your communication for you, in rooms you will never enter.
The mistakes I see most often
- Broadcasting instead of translating. Copy-pasting the executive narrative down every level. Each audience needs the message in their own terms.
- Announcing once and moving on. Treating communication as an event rather than a rhythm.
- Leading with the "what" and hiding the "why." People forgive hard changes they understand and resist easy ones they do not.
- Confusing volume with clarity. More messages, more channels, more slides. Noise is not communication.
- Going silent when there is nothing new. Silence gets filled, and rumor is a faster communicator than you are.
Start with the one sentence
If you take one thing from this: before your next change communication, write the single sentence you want people to repeat. Then build everything backward from it.
Clarity, repetition, relevance, the right channel, and a story worth retelling. None of it is complicated. All of it is rare. That gap is exactly where change either takes hold or quietly dies.
The technology is rarely the hard part. Getting a few thousand people to remember one true sentence and act on it, that is the work.
Cédric Bignet is an AI & ERP Change Management expert at Novartis and founder of AInspire. He writes about change management, AI adoption and enterprise transformation.