“Life, uh… finds a way.”
Picture DNA and you picture a double helix. Two strands — Watson and Crick, Rosalind Franklin’s Photo 51.
But not all helices have two strands. There’s triplex DNA, where a third strand slips into the groove. And there’s collagen — the most abundant protein in your body — wound from three chains. That triple braid is what gives your tendons, skin and bone their strength. Three strands don’t just add information. They add structural integrity.
Which had me thinking its the perfect metaphor for my Pipeline Model of Change Communication. Because most of us broadcast on a single strand — and wonder why the message doesn’t hold.
The concept – the three strands of change communication
In my doctoral research, doing change communication well meant working across three modes — the foundational model in my new book.
Monologic is the top-down strand — the executive announcement, the all-staff email. Its job is stability. It introduces change; alone, it rarely sustains it.
Dialogic is the co-creation strand — Bohm’s dialogue as shared inquiry, in retrospectives and planning. Its job is movement: surfacing concerns and building ownership.
Sensemaking is the background strand — the corridor chat, the Slack side-channel, the late-night “what’s really going on?” Its job is comfort: reducing uncertainty. You can’t control this talk, but you can access it. You cannot not communicate (Watzlawick). Even silence gets transcribed.
The strands are complementary, like DNA’s base pairs — each does what the others can’t. They complete each other.
Connecting the dots
An engineer in my research put it best: “Within change there’s a pipeline where the three types flow through. But if you don’t have the monologic and the dialogic, you just get all this backwash of sensemaking that’s rubbish!”
Crude. And kind of perfect.
Remember Jurassic Park? Incomplete genome, so they spliced in frog DNA — and the gaps filled with something nobody planned. That’s your organisation. When the formal strands are missing, people splice in their own filler: rumour, the grapevine. The sequence completes itself — just not the way you intended.
And the message mutates as it travels. One becomes three:
The official story: “This change is exciting!”
The team story: “They say it’s exciting, but we’ve heard that before.”
The personal story: “I’m worried I’ll lose my job.”
That tension isn’t a problem to flatten — it’s the organisation thinking aloud. Bring the competing strands into the light, and people move to coherence.
The application: How to splice the triple helix
1) Lay down all three strands — stop broadcasting on one
How it works: A single strand is fragile; complementary strands bind into something strong. For any message that matters, build all three.
Practical example: Pair the all-staff email (monologic) with a forum where teams shape its meaning (dialogic) and a designed listening channel for the background talk (sensemaking).
Why it works: Like collagen, the strength is in the braid, not any single thread.
Watch for: Mistaking volume for completeness. Five all-staff emails is still one strand.
2) Sequence the strands deliberately — order is the gene
How it works: The same bases in a different order spell a different gene. One base out of place is a frameshift: everything downstream is garbled. Communication has a reading frame too.
Practical example: Open with monologic to set intent and share what’s known. Add dialogic to flesh out the unknown. Make sensemaking moments to take the temperature — then reintroduce dialogic before go-live.
Why it works: Sequencing moves people from confusion to coherence. Skip the early strands and the pipeline fills with backwash.
Watch for: Leading with “any questions?” before you’ve laid anything down. Openness with no frame reads as a vacuum — and vacuums fill with rumour.
3) Read the mutations — listen to the background talk
How it works: You can’t control the background strand, but you must access it. It’s where the message’s mutations show up first.
Practical example: Floor walks, skip-levels, trusted feedback channels. Surface the official, team and personal stories — and name the tensions aloud.
Why it works: Naming tensions early moves people toward coherence. Much of what we call “resistance” dissipates when dialogue and sensemaking are designed in.
Watch for: Dismissing the grapevine as noise to stamp out. It’s not interference — it’s signal.
The caveat: the helix is design, not control
DNA isn’t destiny — genes express differently by environment, and so does communication. Even a perfect helix falls flat if it clashes with what your audience expects, or if past change has drained their trust.
And notice what the helix does to the word resistance. If much of it is a by-product of how we’ve communicated, the question stops being “what do we do about them?” and becomes “how well have we designed this?” A kinder question — and a more useful one.
Less noise. More meaning. Change that lands.
Over to you
Which strand are you over-relying on — and which is underused? Where has your pipeline started running on backwash?
Searchlight Intelligence is a concept introduced by developmental psychologist Howard Gardner. It means an intelligence that makes connections across different areas and see how these signals and connections could be synthesized to create an opportunity.
A note this edition — the triple helix is the foundational framework at the heart of my new book, Change. Communication. Less Noise. More Meaning. Change That Lands., out this week. The book is the full map: the Pipeline model, the Change Communication Discovery Audit, and the toolkit for braiding all three. Check your online book stores or our book store at the Agile Change Leadership Institute.