Now Communications Group Inc

Why it can be hard to stick to a message (and how to make it easier)Maybe calling it 'message discipline' was a mistake.'Discipline' makes staying on-message sound like a chore, and going off-message sound like a deliberate choice, an act of rebellion. I've had it with your message-box rules, daddy-o. I'm sticking it to The Man.But talk to a leader or spokesperson who has gone off-message, and they usually aren't feeling like defiant mavericks.Either a) they don't realize it's happened, or b) they felt helpless in the moment to keep it from happening: 'I know the message is about pensions - but before I knew it, there I was talking about giraffe mucus.'True, we've seen a few deliberate acts of rebellion - some relatively harmless, some profoundly self-sabotaging. But far more often, here's what really throws people off-message:Boredom: Probably the biggest factor. After the thousandth repetition, chances are you're getting pretty tired of your message. So are the folks closest to you, and your strongest activists.