David Gergening The Message - named after Political Communications maestro, David Gergen - is our favourite framework for ensuring a message gets pulled through across a company.
What is David Gergening The Message?
We learned this concept from longtime LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, who’s the best communicator both of us have ever worked with.
Pasting directly from Jeff’s 2014 article, “Just Because You Said It, Doesn’t Make it So”, the crux of David Gergening The Message is as follows:
As an adviser to four different Presidents of both parties, including Reagan and Clinton, David Gergen is widely recognized as a world-renowned expert on the subject of effectively communicating key messages… He wrote, "History teaches that almost nothing a leader says is heard if spoken only once."A former colleague of mine described it this way: In order to effectively communicate to an audience, you need to repeat yourself so often that you grow sick of hearing yourself say it, and only then will people begin to internalize the message.
As a meta testament to Jeff’s ability to David Gergen the Message, both of us can remember him saying, “You need to repeat yourself so often that you grow sick of hearing yourself say it” at least 50 times, potentially 100+. Given Jeff has been in the majority of his meetings without the two of us, he’s surely shared this advice north of 1,000 times over the years.
We both love that instead of using some quantitative way to measure pull-through - which could also be helpful - it’s a subjective, effort-based metric. The core idea being that if the message is important, we need to say it over-and-over-and-over again.
Where, per below, our saying it a lot doesn’t always mean our kiddos will listen :)
When to Use David Gergening The Message?
Whenever there’s a message that we want to pull through, especially across a large team or company, it’s time to David Gergen the Message. The most common use cases are foundational elements like Mission/Vision/Culture & Values, narratives - which could be at the company level, the business unit level, the product level, etc. - and major change management initiatives such as org changes, new product announcements, and more.
Where about 75% is leading from the front and incorporating it into your talk track and your team’s talk track at every possible communication point. Think large group presentations, as well as 1-on-1s, emails and Slack, digital and analog signage, all-of-the-above. And the other 25% is looking for opportunistic opportunities to amplify the message - e.g., getting on the agenda at the Company All-Hands or asking the CEO to include a blurb in their weekly all-company note.
It’s partially being organized - laying out the comms plan - and partially just having the core content so top-of-mind that you default to incorporating it wherever appropriate.
How do we use David Gergening The Message?
James:
David Gergening The Message is the framework I most closely associate with Jeff Weiner [who’s already given us 
It’s also the framework that I think Jeff most excels at: not only did he repeat important topics over and over, but he repeated exactly the same phrasing and language every single time. I learned that saying exactly the same thing every single time was much more powerful than sharing the same ideas, but without that same level of precision. It’s easy to do this with 1-liners like company Visions and Missions, but Jeff excelled at doing this with every new initiative we introduced: it was a masterclass in precision of communication.
John:
I have two thoughts. First of all, is this really a framework? Do we need a framework to determine if it’s a framework?? Second, when you embrace this challenge, it forces you to ask a few questions up front that can help you shape your message: do I believe in this idea enough that I’m willing to follow through to the point of fatigue; and, how can I refine my message to the point that it’s both memorable and easy to repeat? You know you’ve done it right when you hear people singing the song back to you (picture a concert where the lead singer holds the mic to the crowd during the chorus).
James:
I immediately thought of Steve Perry, Journey, and “Don’t Stop Believing,” probably because I remember Jeff’s own image choice when giving advice on, of all things, karaoke song selection :)
Returning to comms, one of my favourite related ideas to David Gergening The Message is a lesson around overcommunication that I learned from current Vidyard COO, Jonathan Lister (a longtime LinkedIn exec we both worked closely with). As quick context, I’d hired a new director for my team, who was struggling to find his footing on the broader business unit team. Jonathan shared:
I’d recommend [team member X] overcommunicates. Where my definition of overcommunication is that it reaches the point where I have to ask [X] to stop communicating so much. I’ve given this advice to a dozen people and they’ve never communicated enough for me to ask them to tone it down.”
Unfortunately, my direct report also didn’t reach this overcommunication threshold, but I’ve since shared this advice and definition of overcommunication with 10+ folks in similar situations, where none of them reached that definition either, but most made meaningful strides.
Tying back to this Blueprint, if David Gergening The Message is repeating it until YOU are sick of saying it, I suppose Jonathan Listering the Message is overcommunicating with key constituents until THEY are sick of hearing it ;)
John:
I like another thought experiment, credit to Mike Gamson, LinkedIn’s longtime head of sales: “The tennis ball test”. I was working with Mike to introduce a new cultural concept to a global sales team of a few thousand people. We crafted the message, broadcast it a few times at All-Hands and I was on the hook for the follow-up and “pull-through”. I thought I was doing a pretty good job. Mike asked me “if I throw a tennis ball down the hallway and we go to the person that picks it up, what are the chances they will remember what we said?” For some reason this completely randomized approach made me feel like we had a lot of work to do. Perhaps in theory I was doing all the right things, but was I willing to make a bet on it? No, because we’d shared the message, but we hadn’t yet David Gergened The Message.
James:
As a final thought, an easy, powerful test for who excels at David Gergening The Message is whose voice you can hear in your head repeating a specific phrase or set of ideas from your current or past workplace. Coming back to Mike Gamson, anybody who worked with him for more than 6 months will remember him sharing over and over again that LinkedIn’s cultural tenets defined “who we are and who we aspire to be.” Or former LinkedIn CHRO Pat Wadors emphasizing that “Employees Deserve to be Treated Beautifully.” Broadening beyond the working world and returning to David Gergen - perhaps the most successful political communications expert ever - I’m sure we can all think of key phrases from Presidents, Prime Ministers, and more.
Want to learn more?
WANT TO GO DEEPER ON THIS FRAMEWORK?
Here’s the first time Jeff outlined this concept in writing (he’d been saying it in All-Hands and other forums for years before this):
WANT TO GO DEEPER ON RELATED FRAMEWORKS?
For driving change through an organization, we’re both big proponents of Mike Derezin’s 2-Part Blueprint:
For broader Communications and Storytelling, we default to recommending:
Finally, there’s a clear connection between hitting messages over-and-over again and prioritization - there are only so many topics employees can internalize in any given time period - which brings us to:
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