IABC Change Management SIG: Communicating for Cut-Through: Brain Hacks for Complex Change Environments

When attention is the scarcest resource in change, communication must work harder. Dr. Jen Frahm explores the intersection of applied neuroscience, agile change, and change communication to reveal how to achieve cut-through in complex environments.

Together, we’ll unpack:

1. How to create cut-through when audiences are tired, overwhelmed, or working in complex systems.
2. How to communicate inclusively and respectfully with diverse audiences.
3. How to foster clarity in times of extreme uncertainty and ambiguity.

You’ll walk away with three brain-friendly communication techniques you can apply immediately to make your messages stick and your change conversations count.

Speaker

Dr. Jen Frahm is the co-founder of The Agile Change Leadership Institute and builds change capability in organizations. She is a global expert on organizational change, communication and transformation, a tamer of ambiguity, speaker of truths, and solver of problems.

An IABC recommended speaker, she is known for being at the frontier of business agility and change. She is the author of Change. Leader – The changes you need to make first (2021), Conversations of Change: A guide to workplace change (2017), and co-author of The Agile Change Playbook (2020). Her latest book Change. Communication will be published in 2026.

She has designed and delivered change across multiple industries and professions, from wine sales to wedding dresses, veterinary products to energy retailers, nuns and engineers, big banks, small IT companies, publicly listed, privately owned and non-profit organizations, and across 28 countries. She now lives and works from Seddon on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung (Naarm / Melbourne), Australia.