I was in a meeting where the Chief Communications Officer was explaining to the CEO that he had to repeat his change message, again and again and again. She had a comprehensive list of strategic outlets for his message. Everything was lined up and carefully planned.

Instead of embracing such a well thought out program, the CEO groaned. “But I told them we’re changing,” he said. “What else can I say?”

Ah. This gentleman clearly didn’t understand a simple basic guide for message (especially change messages): Repeat, repeat, and repeat again. In fact, a good rule of thumb is: Message at least seven times.

Why? It’s not because the executive doesn’t communicate well, or the communications effort is lacking. It’s because you want your message to be heard. You have to cut through the noise. When employees are focused on their customers and their work, striving to achieve their goals, while bombarded with org announcements, compliance reminders, building alerts, sales metrics, HR deadlines, project notifications, industry updates — and everything else that makes up work and life — you have to put in effort to be heard.

And you have to put in a lot of effort. You need to enable the message to be both repeated and amplified.

As you strategize to communicate your organization’s next change, take a look at the document that is your communications action plan. As an exercise, count the times your key audiences are “touched” by the change message. If you hit that threshold of seven times, you know that you’re on the right track to being heard. But if you see a lower trend, take a few minutes to think about how you can repeat, repeat, and repeat again. It’s worth it.