Comms in Technicolor

I've been thinking a lot about how we communicate change. We have more ways than ever before to get a message out, and also more things competing for our attention.

Last week we talked about clear and kind, and the idea that clarity in the middle of change is one of the kindest things a leader can give. Clear and kind is what you say. This week is about how it actually reaches people, so let me define what I mean by black and white and technicolor communication.

Black and white communication is the way it's always been done. One message, sent from the top, one time, and we check the box that it was communicated. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it's flat and assumes everyone hears it the same way. Technicolor communication is honest and transparent. It reaches people more than one way, from people they trust. It's shaped by actually knowing who is on the other end and what they need to hear. It reads the room. Same core message, but it shows up in technicolor. Think of the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the farmhouse door and her black and white Kansas gives way to Oz in full technicolor. She is the same Dorothy, but suddenly everything is vivid and clear. That clarity is what I picture when I think about the difference in how we communicate.

So what makes for "technicolor communication"? It can be easy to think technicolor communication must be FLASHY! SHINY! LOUD! (spoiler alert, it's not). It's hard to break through all of the noise out there, and our attention spans feel shorter and more stretched than ever. Adam Grant recently talked with Gloria Mark, a UC Irvine researcher who has been measuring how people use their attention on screens since the early 2000s, on his TED podcast ReThinking (Why a digital detox won't reset your attention span with Gloria Mark). She shares that in the early 2000s, we spent about two and a half minutes on a screen before switching, by 2012, it was about 75 seconds, and most recently, it's at about 47 seconds (she lays all of it out in her book, Attention Span). My takeaway was that our attention didn't break, the competition for it just got a whole lot louder.

If it's not flashier communication, then what is it? How do we know if we're communicating in black and white or in technicolor? So glad you asked. Research shows it's knowing your people, the moment, what lands, and what doesn't. My technicolor conclusion is that honesty, transparency, and actually knowing your team still matter most.

In an HBR article, Building Employee Buy-In for Strategic Change, Rebecca Knight wrote that strategic initiatives often land as abstract ideas that feel disconnected from the reality on the ground, and that it's up to team leaders to help people see what it means for them. If we don't, we're left with "just another big announcement that doesn't stick." The new 2026 AI Adoption Report from Knowledge at Wharton lands in the same place, with study lead Jeremy Korst pointing to "aligned leadership teams, empowered employees" as the advantage. Simply put, a message that only comes from the top, one time, is a broadcast (black and white). A message that reaches the same person a few different ways (get creative!), from a leader they trust, a manager who can talk it through, something short they can reread, and a real place to ask questions, is communication (technicolor).

It doesn't need to be profound. Given current times, the more human the messaging is, the more impactful it is. Also, let's all collectively give each other the permission to skip the canned corporate speak...corporate speak does not increase shareholder value, help us reach our shared strategic objectives or achieve our Q4 QBR results (sorry, I couldn't help myself). I'm not saying the traditional ways of communicating are obsolete, but the ways you communicate have to match the moment and your team. Sharing a FAQ that includes ZERO real answers to the questions that your team actually has is not value added. Those answers might be uncomfortable. Maybe a FAQ isn't the right medium to use in those cases. We have more innovative, impactful, and creative ways than ever before to communicate messages (micro learnings, round tables, videos, podcasts, 1:1's, the world is your oyster!) but...if it doesn't resonate with your team and answer the actual questions they have, none of it matters and you're stuck in black and white.

Pause and reflect

As we head into the weekend, take a minute to reflect on a few things (I'm asking myself these too!)

1. 01Think about the last big change you lived through, whether you were the one sending the message or the one on the receiving end. How many ways did you hear about it, and who did you hear it from? Where were the gaps?
2. 02Pick one message you need to share with your team in the next couple of weeks. Besides the email (because there's always an email), what's one other way you could get it to them? A quick video, a heads up conversation with your managers before the big announcement, a one pager people can come back to...
3. 03If you were on the receiving end of that message, where would you take your questions? If you can't point to a place, what's one thing you could set up next week so there is one?

I'll leave you with this -

"The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it."

Have a great weekend!

Andrea

Full transparency, I’m not the source of these ideas. Every week I pull together what I’m reading, listening to, and learning from some of the smartest voices in leadership and AI, and I tag every one so you can go to the source (please do). What I like to do is connect the dots on what I’m seeing out in the world.