Islands of Safety
A critical framework for communicating with influence.
Islands of Safety: A Lifeline for Critical Communications
Imagine you have to deliver a critical communication and the room is potentially full of shark infested waters or emotionally charged rip currents. Your goal is to bring your audience—whether it’s your CEO, Board of Directors, your team, or your customers—safely from uncertainty to clarity.
As you navigate these waters, you need a rock solid place to reorient the room when the waters get choppy. These “Islands of Safety” are your essential anchor points and your high ground in your storytelling journey. When properly established, they ensure your message is both memorable, impactful, and influential.
I first learned the "Islands of Safety" from some of the best media trainers in the business as we were preparing for an IPO. These media trainers had formerly trained Presidents and Senators. The same effective communications techniques where you are the chief storyteller applies equally to any kind of executive communication.
The core idea is to carve out no more than 3 clear 1st principle type anchor points in a sea of complex information. The communication framework is a powerful way to reinforce the “Why!” and the “So what?” to enable your audience to remember the key takeaways especially when dealing with high uncertainty and high-stakes communications situations.
The idea is simple but I’ve found it takes months and years of practice for most people before it’s mastered. The Islands of Safety are rooted in classic storytelling techniques and have been proven by neuroscience to be an extremely effective way to influence and control a high stakes communication with a group of people.
Anchoring Your Communication with 3 Core Messages:
In a high-stakes situation, like presenting quarterly results to your Board and investors, a CEO explaining a challenging pivot, or a founder announcing a reorganization, it's easy for your audience to get lost in the details. Even worse, if there are too few details provided during the critical communication, the audience will fill in the gaps with their own stories. These situations are emotionally charged, the stakes are high, and the attention span is limited. In these moments, crafting "Islands of Safety" means focusing on a few key messages you want your audience to remember and repeat vs. getting lost in a sea of uncertainty.
Creating Your Islands
1. Name Your Islands: These should be simple names that can be easily recalled and repeated. For example, if you are a CFO delivering future financial guidance, your three islands that you need to always swim back to in your communication might be "Months of Cash Runway," “Path to Profitability,” or “At Least 60% Gross Margins.” Naming your islands are harder than it sounds.
2. Mind the Gaps: All three islands need to be able to comprehensively address any anticipated objection your audience may throw at you. If your 3 islands cannot be bridged back to by any question or concern, then create a better island.
3. Create Bridges to Connect Your Islands: Bridging statements need to be created (and written down in your own personal cheat sheet) to help you not only bridge from island to island but most importantly to bridge the audience back to one of your three islands when you find yourself in those shark infested waters or rip currents of confusion. These bridging statements should be in your own words and style of speaking but they all have a common foundation of quickly taking back control of the conversation by transporting everyone (including yourself) back to one of your three islands (remember these are 1st principles, focus, or key takeaways designed for your audience). Examples include:
“That’s an interesting question that I’m happy to address individually with you. However, I’d like to keep the questions focused on one of the three most important things I believe everyone here should takeaway from our conversation today.”
“Joe (board member), the answer to your question about CAC (customer acquisition cost) is $25 per customer. While this may sound high in our industry, it’s important to remember we can actually spend up to $35 to acquire each customer and still achieve one of our three key company strategies this year to ‘Grow Profitability with at least 60% Gross Margins.’”
Sometimes, the shorter the bridging statement that gets you back on your island is the effective at controlling the conversation by keeping everyone focused on the critical issues at hand. An example of very short would be, “I believe we are going down a rabbit hole. Our focus needs to be on extending our cash runway.”
Finally, play with creating bridging statements that let you jump from island to island to really bring your three key points home.
How to Deliver Islands of Safety
The power of "Islands of Safety" lies in the undeniable truth of each statement. Try to make the statement aligned with your company’s core values or strategies for maximum impact. Audiences are usually bombarded with information, and while we wish every fact we share would stick, most details are forgotten quickly. But these core islands—delivered confidently and repeated many times will help you become an effective and influential communicator.
Let’s say you’re announcing a major reorg of your company. Instead of diving into a stream of details, first establish your islands: "This reorg is designed to extend our months of cash runway to enable us to show a clear path to profitability and thus enable us to raise our next round of financing in the next 18 months.”
Then, return to it throughout the talk:
- When discussing budgets: “We have to find more organic ways to grow our customer and must reduce our external marketing advertising and branding spending by 50% so we can increase the number of months of our cash runway.”
- When talking about reassigning teams: “Moving these teams is crucial to focusing our efforts on the products that are delivering a minimum of 60% gross margin.”
This repetition does more than just reiterate—it builds trust. Your audience feels anchored because they know the destination, even as they navigate the currents of data and shifting details.
Why It Works: A Bit of Neuroscience
The human brain loves patterns—we’re wired to find structure and meaning, even in chaos. "Islands of Safety" leverage this neurological need. By repeating core messages, you’re creating a cognitive anchor that makes it easier for your audience to follow you, even if the surrounding content is dense or emotionally charged. This technique also helps reduce cognitive load, allowing people to focus on what matters instead of becoming overwhelmed by the noise.
Bringing It to Your Leadership
As a startup leader, the ability to communicate effectively during critical decision making times or crisis is one of your most valuable skills. I’ve written about financial leadership in crisis moments before (here).
Core, repeatable messages become a north star for your audience, making you not just a speaker, but a leader who provides stability and a clear future path in times of high stakes uncertainty.
Practice It
Try crafting your own Islands of Safety for an upcoming meeting or presentation.
Identify no more than 3 core messages to anchor your communication
Write down bridging statements to allow you to get back to your islands and jump from island to island fluently.
Note: It took me a good 3-5 years to practice these techniques before I no longer needed my trusty handwritten notebook where I would pre-wire my three Islands of Safety for an important Board meeting, exec leadership meeting, or all company meeting. I also kept a tabbed list of “Favorite Bridging Statements” for when I found myself in the shark infested waters of confusion or negativity from the group. In many critical moments, where I believed I needed the most influence, I would quietly turn to this tabbed page and prepare to bridge the conversation back to one of the critical Islands.
Remember: Clear messages, delivered consistently, are the difference between an audience that feels overwhelmed and one that feels guided.
Stay tuned for next week in a follow up post detailing how to specifically deliver your Islands of Safety communication by having a SECS Talk. Got your attention, didn’t it?
Until then….
My Islands of Safety is a powerful part of my Coaching practice and one of my core top level frameworks for leadership I use to help leaders communicate their expertise for maximum influence. If you’re interested in diving deeper into how to craft these Islands of Safety or other communication and leadership strategies, reach out to me directly on LinkedIn or via Substack and we can talk more in-depth about my coaching practice for scaling startups from Series A to IPO.
