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Beat the Drum

My former COO gave me a piece of advice when I became a manager. He said that leaders have to deliver the same message again and again and again to make sure it gets through to everyone in the organization.

The advice made sense to me at the time, but it became more concrete to me as I tried to apply it and as I noticed when leaders above me failed to do it. I brought it up to my former COO recently, and he put it in a fantastically pithy way by saying “yep, you have to beat the drum.” The drums kept armies aligned on messages as simple as “advance” and “retreat.” Similary, organizations need their leaders to continuously communicate to keep people in sync.

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