Enrol people in the shortest possible time, clarify and address barriers, and deliver messages in a way that tests understanding and commitment.

Schemes, dreams, plans, goals, changes and everything else we do requires other people to lead, follow or get out of the way. Each of us runs into the puzzle of how best to communicate a tough message to someone important in our lives. How to bring about the most understanding in the shortest time.

How to create allies instead of skeptics and enemies. How to best gain other’s best thinking about the challenge at hand. How to ensure sustainable support. How to be in charge of the communication, however charged. How to test for the other’s understanding. When to go faster or slower.

Impacto is our offering to aid with these challenges. It is a process map with five domains: Purpose, Urgency, Destination, Success Path and Commitment. Each domain is a necessary part of a communication which lets others know what we are up to and why, and how we want them involved or not involved.

Impacto is both a framework for thinking and a design and delivery process for communications which enrols people in our cause. It gives us a way to develop understanding in the other person, layer by layer. It gives us frequent, natural opportunities to stop and assess whether common understanding and agreement is developing. To go no faster or further than the other person is prepared to go. It gives us a plan for orderly retreat, if we have overstepped the other person’s ability to hear us. It puts us in charge of the process. It builds allies It is strategic enough to communicate upward. In fact, it is essential preparation for anyone seeking support from higher organisational levels.

Rarely does anyone begin Impacto at the beginning and go to the end, filling in the blanks. Each domain is deeply interlinked with the others. An addition or modification in one will ripple through the others. The design process may well be jazzy, meandering,
helter skelter, a free for all. Eventually, a story will reveal itself on the map Larger threads appear. The domains align themselves. This can take an hour or a day or two, depending on the complexity of the issue and the clarity of your purposes.

To get started, find the domains where you feel you have some material, some interest, and some energy to state the case. Put down whatever you have. Emptied of this, take a stab at a domain which remains thin or empty. At the invention stage, do not concern yourself with how well the story hangs together. More important now to get everything you believe you know and want on the map.

Acknowledgememts

Education Scotland has licensed the Transition Leadership tools and the Three Horizons toolkit for the specific and sole purpose of improving Scottish Education and the partner services that support it. We are delighted to have partnered the following people and organisations in this venture: Executive Arts Inc.; James R. Ewing, ForthRoad Ltd.; International Futures Forum and Graham Leicester.