Dear comms...

If you're pulling together your stakeholder map mid-crisis, it's too late. In the final episode of this season on stakeholder management, Imogen and Amanda look at why we should build relationships before we have anything to talk about. They look at why stakeholder management doesn't just sit in comms and why it's important to top up our reputational piggy bank. 

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Are your stakeholders difficult... or just misunderstood? 

“Ugh, they’re a nightmare.” We’ve all said it about a stakeholder. But very few people start out difficult - something's happened to get them there. 

In this episode, Imogen and Amanda look at what’s really behind challenging behaviour and how you respond to the issue rather than the emotion. They talk about why, no matter how tempting, you shouldn't send that angry email, and why relationships matter more than winning. 

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Stakeholders: mapped
Conversations: had
Consensus: missing

Episode three in this series on stakeholder management looks at what happens when you've gathered every perspective and there's still no obvious answer (which, let's be honest, is most of the time).

Imogen and Amanda work through how to get clear on what the real decision is, who needs to make it, and how you can make a choice without being 100% sure. 

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Stakeholders don't always agree with us. More often than not, they push back. Your first instinct might be to go through your argument once more (just to make sure). Don't. 

In episode two of their stakeholder management series, Imogen and Amanda look at what to do when it feels you're not only on a completely different page from your stakeholder, you're actually not even reading the same book. 

They look at why curiosity beats defensiveness, how to understand the question behind the question, and why common ground doesn't have to mean full agreement.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

If you're in comms, you'll probably already have a stakeholder list. But the question is... are the right people on it? 

In the first episode of a new series on stakeholder management, Imogen and Amanda start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Who counts as a stakeholder? And which ones are the most important?

Influence rarely sticks to hierarchy and org charts - and the most important person might be someone you've completely forgotten about. 

So, if you've only got time for five conversations this week, who should they be with (and which one have you been putting off?) 

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

The launch goes well. The energy is high. Everyone's talking about it. 

Come back in three months. 

The final episode in the series tackles the part most organisations get wrong: what happens after the initial momentum fades and the stresses and strains of the day job loom. Without deliberate reinforcement, old habits will win out every time.

Imogen and Amanda share five practical ways to make change stick for the long term. From baking new behaviours into the systems, to closing the skills gap before it becomes a confidence gap, to measuring whether people are actually doing things differently, rather than just opening the email. 

Writing the case for change is the easy bit. Making it last is a different challenge entirely.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Sometimes everyone understands the change perfectly. But...  nothing actually changes. 

Understanding and doing are not the same thing. Episode four looks at how you move people from knowing what the change is all the way through to owning it. Imogen and Amanda share the Know, Imagine, Believe, Act framework they use with their clients, and talk through how you might apply it in your role.

They cover why repetition is a feature, not a failure; how informal leaders move change faster than any top-down cascade; and why measuring email open rates tells you almost nothing about whether your communications are working. 

People change when they see people like them changing. Your job is to find those people, give them permission to go first, and make sure everyone notices.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

You've made the announcement. You've sent the slides. You've done the town hall. And people still aren't getting it. 

The problem isn't the information. It's that change communications isn't a campaign...and you can't treat it like one. 

In episode three, Imogen and Amanda look at how to communicate when your team is emotionally all over the place. Some are still in shock. Some are angry. Some have quietly checked out. None of them are where you are. Each stage needs something different from you - different conversations, different channels, different levels of listening. 

The real work isn't in the big broadcast moments, it's when you're sitting in a room face to face with your team. That's where change becomes real. And that's what this episode is about.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Most change programmes go wrong before they've even begun. Not in the rollout... but in the room where leaders agreed it was a good idea. 

Episode two is about preparation. Or, more specifically, what needs to be in place before anything is announced. Real alignment is not just agreeing the change is happening, but finding consensus on what it means, what the story is, and what different groups of people will need to hear. When your leaders are telling different stories, confusion spreads faster than any message you put out. 

Imogen and Amanda walk through how to build a genuine case for change, why stakeholder mapping is more than a box-ticking exercise, and how to think through the blockers before they ambush you under pressure. 

They also pose five questions to ask your leadership team before you press go. If everyone gives you a different answer, you're not ready.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;) 

Change is coming. Everyone knows it. So why is no one acting like it?

Most leaders spend months on the strategy, the timeline, the business case. Far less time on the thing that will actually determine whether any of it works: how it feels to be on the receiving end.

In this first episode of our series on leading change, Imogen and Amanda start with the human side - denial, anger, bargaining, doubt, and the slow road to acceptance. They explain why resistance usually isn't resistance at all. And why all change, even positive change, is experienced as a form of loss.

If you've ever been frustrated that your team isn't moving at your pace, this episode is for you. They're not being difficult. They're being human. And that's not a communications problem - it's just where we have to start.

Imogen Hitchcock and Amanda Pierce have a clear purpose: creating communications (and communicators) that spark action, drive growth, and build lasting influence. Between them, there’s not a question or crisis they haven’t faced. From the everyday “could you just…” to high-stakes challenges, they’re here to share their insights and help you thrive.

They'd love your stars, favourites, and follows. Please, give them the social validation they crave ;)