Saturday Catch-Up: Top 5 in Numbers and Lists

Kerrie Smit
May 11, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Oct 17

This week we're bringing you the top 5 in numbers and lists. Articles with a clue in the title, like lists, are sometimes just what we need—a little bit of life or work advice truncated into the top 3 things we need to know right now. This week we'll look at Agencia Change articles that contained numbers and lists.

Incidentally, this might provide some insight for your next round of communications too—because people tend to engage with lists and "listicles" (articles that present information in a list). To transform your communication into a list, include a clue in the headline as to how much information your reader is about to take in, and organise the content into numbered points.

We like lists because they follow a familiar format—they’re numbered—and you scroll down to see what’s next. This predictability allows us to develop a mental map of the information, making it easier to understand and process. Then there's FOMO! Once you know a list exists, not clicking on it feels like missing out on knowledge you could have had. Lists reduce the cognitive load of reading because while we're deciding whether to click on links, a list simplifies our choices by presenting information in bite-sized chunks, making it feel more manageable. The volume of information available at our fingertips can feel overwhelming. Lists reduce the burden because we're already aware of how many pieces of information we'll be reading, and they're easy to scan.

Lists work well for:

Isolated facts or practical advice
Providing structure
Reducing cognitive load
Catering to our busy lives

See what I did there? In this week's Saturday Catch-up we bring you the top 5 in numbers and lists.

Your Top 5 List-Based Insights

Building a Career in Change Management: 5 Skills to cultivate (11 February 2024) presented top tips to give an insight into the day-to-day work of change management and provide you with a 30-year career shortcut. These are the skills you'll use to help the change get ahead. While we applaud methodology courses and Masters degrees, you won't see these in our top 5 skills list.
Three traits for Change Management Success (27 February 2024) discussed the top 3 traits for Change Managers, Change Leaders, and Change Implementations. When Change Managers and Change Leaders work together to implement successful change, the resulting partnership can be tremendously satisfying and a way for organisations to increase their likelihood of success and achieve sustainable results.
The Power of a Single Sponsor: Driving Success in Project Management, (July 2023) covered how, in project management, having a dedicated and influential sponsor can make all the difference to the success of a project. We know we need a coalition of stakeholders and group support, but in this post, we looked at how a single sponsor provides the accountability to significantly impact project outcomes.
Big Change and what it means for all the other changes, (2 February 2024) presented the concept of change taking on new dimensions. We know we can't contain change at an individual level and now we're learning we need to do much better at managing change as a global force. We list some significant human changes of our era and how they impact people's approach to change generally.
8 Common Misconceptions About Change Management (3 May 2024) offered a slightly tongue-in-cheek discussion about those regular tropes we encounter in the market. Change management is a crucial process for organisations navigating transitions, but it’s often misunderstood. For those change leaders and practitioners who have been in the industry for some time, feel free to play along and shout "bingo" when you've collected the whole set of 8!