Seven Times, Seven Different Ways

Me: How could we have missed the due date on the zinc order for ABC Manufacturing?
VP of Operations (disgusted, shrugging): I told the supervisor it had to go.
Me: Did you tell him seven times, seven different ways?
VP: Huh?

When relying on communication to get things done, one time and one mode of communication is almost never enough. Anecdotally, few people will remember well an instruction, request or message delivered one time. 

Further, recent research indicates our attention spans are getting worse! A few years ago, Microsoft published a study that our attention spans had decreased by almost a third in the preceding 15 years, from 12 seconds to just eight. Goldfish, so we’re told, have an attention span of nine seconds, meaning that the little orange-scaled fella in my fishbowl might pay me better attention than will the average teammate, customer or supplier. 

The pandemic made the problem worse with at least one study indicating that 80% of us became more forgetful during the lockdowns. 

Assuming this research is true, is it any wonder that requests, directives and messages often don’t accomplish their intended results? 

What’s the fix? Send the message seven times, seven different ways, meaning deliver the message seven times by seven different modes of communication.  Verbal and email would be two modes, for instance. More follow below.

I’ve lived by the seven times seven different ways mantra for decades. If I want to make sure a message gets received and acted on, I make my best attempt to send it seven times seven different ways. While I may not always reach seven of either, the effort increases the odds that the message connects with the intended recipient.

Seven times, seven different ways works almost no matter the message we’re hoping to send or the recipient we’re hoping gets the message. Ensuring that an expedited order gets out to a key customer, scheduling a sales appointment with a prospect who’s not yet a key customer, ensuring the company’s mission statement isn’t just a jumble of words hung on the wall but actually defines the soul of the company, sending each of these seven times, seven different ways gets the message through.  

It’s a great mantra for sales and marketing too. Countless number of times a customer or prospect has called one of our business development team members asking for information about a “new” finish that they forgot we met about six months prior because we sent the message one time, one way instead of seven by seven. Likewise, posting about a new finishing solution once or sending a single blast email is a great way to fail at creating energy or brand recognition. Rather, inform the market seven times and seven different ways.

The concept of seven times is easy. Even in this day of constrained attention spans, most of us (and perhaps even goldfish) can count to seven before we lose focus. What about seven different ways?

When first I started using seven times seven different ways the number of ways were limited. I could walk up to a team member and tell them what I wanted. I could write a memo — you’re probably over 40 if you remember what a memo is (Date:, To:, From:, Subject:) — and over 50 if you remember the interoffice manilla envelope with the two discs and the red string we used to fasten the top. I could send an email, leave a voicemail or stick a post-it note at a workspace. I still use all of these, minus the memo and manilla envelope, of course. Verbal discussions, emails, voicemails, post-it notes. I’m up to four.

In the modern age, we now have myriad additional modes of communication. Type a text, send a video, send a photo, send a voice memo, Facetime, LinkedIn, YouTube and — assuming you’re of the age that doesn’t know what an interoffice memo is — Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Twitch, BeReal and my own personal favorite (addiction) TikTok.

Just with the above, our number of ways to send messages are over 20 and we haven’t even touched on our ERP systems, our MES systems, our learning management systems or collaborative platforms such as SharePoint. With so many modes, getting to seven times is just a matter of choosing the communication modes most likely to reach the audience. 

In the case of this article, when it hits the market it will be available to the audience in the print version of a magazine, on several online sites. I will post it on social media as will members of the Products Finishing team, on multiple platforms. The marketing teams of three of our companies will post it to their audiences and I’ll share it with the leadership teams of those companies as well. It will likely be referenced, by me, in a speech or two in the coming months and I’ll email and text a link to several business contacts who I think will benefit from its message. 

At least in the case of this article, seven by seven seems to be working.