Part 2 of What on earth is a Rallying Cry?
This is part 2 of 4 in the ‘what on earth is a Rallying Cry? series. If you missed it, read the introduction to find out why we need Rallying Cries now more than ever.
Find the others
For a mission to become a movement you need people
Rallying Cries work for anyone who can help you on your mission to make the world a better place – that could be clients, team members, stakeholders, investors, volunteers, influencers or neighbours.
But the rub is that we’re all busy, distracted, and bombarded by thousands of messages a day. We’re also all getting really good at filtering out the noise.
Your Rallying Cry is the foot in the door. The thing that makes people stop and pay attention. And a thing that they feel like they can get behind.
Help it spread
By being remarkable
When something’s remarkable – different, bold or brave – people want to comment on it or talk about it.
Your Rallying Cry doesn’t have to be remarkable to the whole world, just to the people you want to support you. By being remarkable, it makes your job easier because people more naturally spread the word.
There’s some awesome psychology at work here because our brains love surprises. In Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, Tania Luna explains:
we react more strongly when something is unexpected… it triggers a neuro response that tells us something is important and we should pay attention.
And it gets even more exciting (well, for a psychology geek like me it does)… When we’re surprised, our brain joins the dots, attaching that feeling to memories or existing knowledge… which means we’re more likely to remember it.
Dive deeper:
- This is what Seth Godin was talking about with his ideavirus. You want your idea to be so remarkable that it spreads like a sneeze.
- Taken by Surprise: Tania Luna at TEDxTeen
Create a community
There’s something magical when a group of people come together to achieve a shared mission. It brings a sense of belonging and connection. And when people feel these, they’re more motivated, work better, are happier and more likely to achieve goals.
This is exciting for two reasons…
It creates a flywheel with our previous point. If people’s interactions with your company or cause are positive, it often feels surprising, which in turn helps your message spread.
And two, you’re going to need a community! Trying to change the status quo is often a long and difficult path to take. Your community will be the ones to cheer you on and pick you up along the way.
Dive deeper:
Some more fun stats for the psychology geeks:
When people had a sense of community at work… that they were 58% more likely to thrive at work, 55% more engaged, and 66% more likely to stay with their organization. They experienced significantly less stress and were far more likely to thrive outside of work, too.”
Research states that belonging is not only good for workers but for business too. Belonging can lead to a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% reduction in turnover risk, a 167% increase in employer net promoter score, 2X more employee raises, 18X more employee promotions, and a 75% decrease in sick days.
Stay on course
With extreme clarity and focus
A Rallying Cry drives you in the right direction acting as a compass. It helps keep you on track, and it becomes easy to see when something isn’t aligned with your goals. I like to think of them as bowling alley bumpers, with room to move within them, but keeping you from veering wildly off-course.
It gives you a mindset that you and your team can easily reference… Is what we’re doing in line with our Rallying Cry? If it’s not, you can correct your course accordingly.
Create something mesmerising
By staying consistent
Consistency in communications is massively underrated. And I don’t just mean in your marketing, but your day-to-day communications too.
The best way to help you understand this is with starlings. Yes, the birds.
Lots of birds kind of doing the same thing looks kind of cool, right…
But when everyone is perfectly aligned, it creates something mesmerising…
When every piece of communication is consistent and saying the same thing, it creates an incredible effect, much like a starling murmuration.
This isn’t about being parrots, and mindlessly repeating the same thing word for word all the time. Notice every bird in that murmuration is doing something slightly different, but they’re all doing it in sync… that’s what creates the magic.
Lots of birds kind of doing the same thing looks kind of cool, right…
But when everyone is perfectly aligned, it creates something mesmerising…
When every piece of communication is consistent and saying the same thing, it creates an incredible effect, much like a starling murmuration.
This isn’t about being parrots, and mindlessly repeating the same thing word for word all the time. Notice every bird in that murmuration is doing something slightly different, but they’re all doing it in sync… that’s what creates the magic.
If I’ve done my job well, you should be thinking that a Rallying Cry is exactly what you need. But before we dive into what it should look like, I need to do some expectation-setting. Rallying Cries do a lot of heavy lifting, but they aren’t a magic pill.
Head to part 3 to find out why, and how to avoid ending up with just a collection of nice-sounding words.