Change Communications

Personal thoughts on the role of change communications in major IT deployments:

Create an image of the future:

• From what to what? What will change exactly? Prevent rumours.
• Present the bigger picture, strategy? Why are we doing this, spending all this money?

Aid the transition phase:

• Ensure all actors have the information required to change: training, timings.
• Reassure about technical worries and uncertainties.

Set expectation:

• Scope will invariably change. Descoping, prioritisation. Big impact on user acceptance.
• Provide workarounds and temporary solutions.

Source: Nicholas Ranken, Lawson Project

In a recent survey by the Conference Board, 539 global CEOs were asked to list their top concerns. In Europe and Asia as well as in North America, organizational flexibility and adaptability to change consistently ranked at the top of the list. Only revenue growth was of higher concern.

Source: Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., Communitelligence

Change communication requires an expanded defintion of communication: from speech writing, intranet content development, e-mail messages, roll-out/cascade programs – and the rest of the current traditional approaches – to a more inclusive overview encompassing leadership behavior, reward systems, organizational goal-setting, recognition programs, work processes, workplace design, and strategic conversations within formal and informal networks.

Most importantly, it means letting go of any preconceived notion of finding “the one right way” to communicate change. No “transformation formula” lasts forever. In fact, the best change-communication techniques aren’t found in any single source or strategy. The most effective guidelines evolve in response to a series of questions:

Question #1 – What is the employees’ perspective?
Front-line employees deal regularly with customers and observe first-hand the issues, challenges, and successes of those they serve. The IT department sees advances in technology before the rest of the organization has adapted to the last update. Professionals throughout the company attend association meetings and have access to experts in their field. Your organization has hired the best and the brightest – and your task is to tap their expertise, points of view, and concerns. The first question to ask is: “What do employees think?”

Question #2 – Did you “set the stage” for change?
The best time to discuss the forces of change is well in advance of an organization’s response to them. Everyone in the organization needs a realistic appreciation of the precursors of change and transformation – the impact of globalization, market fluctuations, technological innovations, societal and demographic changes in the customer base, new products/services of competitors, new government and regulatory decisions. And here technology can be a great asset. Although it certainly shouldn’t be the only medium, the intranet can be a timely vehicle for competitive and industry information.

Question #3 – How will you track employee perceptions?
Employee interaction and feedback loops help communicators track the level of workforce comprehension. Whether you supply an email box or a phone number for individuals to ask questions about the change, use online surveys to query a sampling of the workforce, or create Communication Advisory Teams to represent their fellow workers, the greatest advantages come when organizational feedback is gathered immediately after the delivery of an important message.

Question #4 – Do you have honest answers to tough questions?
Not only can employees tolerate honest disclosure, they are increasingly demanding it. And when it comes to change, employees want straight answers to these tough questions:
* Will I keep my job?
* How will pay and benefits be affected?
* How will this affect my opportunities for advancement?
* Will I have a new boss?
* What new skills will I need?
* What will be expected of me?
* How will I be trained/supported for the new challenges?
* How will I be measured?
* What are the rewards or consequences?

Question #5 – Can you answer the most important question: What’s in it for them? There are personal advantages to be found in almost every change, but people may need help discovering what the advantages are. Sometimes employees just need to be guided through a few questions: What are your career goals? What are the skills you would like to learn? What job-related experiences would you like have? In what ways might this change help you to fulfill some of your personal objectives?

Question #6 – Have you narrowed the “say-do” gap?
Organizations send two concurrent sets of messages about change. Formal communication is what companies “say” to employees about the organization and its goals. Informal communication is what the company “does” in terms of rewards, compensation, training, leadership behavior, organizational structure, etc. to demonstrate and support what it says. For today’s skeptical employee audiences, rhetoric without action quickly disintegrates into empty slogans and company propaganda.

Question #7- Who’s vision is it?
Effective communicators understand the power of vision to imbue people with a sense of purpose, direction and energy. But if the vision belongs only to top management, it will never be an effective force for transformation. In the end, people have to feel that the vision belongs to them. The power of a vision comes truly into play only when the employees themselves have had some part in its creation. So the communicator’s role moves from crafting executive speeches to facilitating interactive events.

Question #8 – Can you paint the big-little picture?
Vision is the big picture, and it is crucial to the success of the enterprise. But along with the big picture, people also need the little picture so they know where their contribution fits into the corporate strategy. And here’s where first-line supervisors can be the most effective communicators. In face-to-face discussions with their team members, supervisors become a vital link in turning the organizational vision into practical and meaningful actions.

Question #9 – Are you emotionally literate?
People have to understand the rationale for change – the business case, the marketplace reality. But change is more than just the logic behind it. Large-scale organizational change almost invariably triggers the same sequence of emotional reactions — denial, negativity, a choice point, acceptance, and commitment. Communicators who track this emotional process design strategies that help people accept and move through the various stages.

Question #10 – Are you telling stories?
Good stories are more powerful than plain facts. This is not to reject the value in facts, of course, but simply to recognize their limits in influencing people. People make decisions based on what facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. Stories give facts meaning. Stories resonate with adults in ways that can bring them back to a childlike open-mindedness – and make them less resistant to experimentation and change.

Question #11 – Do you know how change really gets communicated?
Town hall meetings in which senior leaders speak openly about change, great stories that embody the spirit of change, well-designed intranets filled with pertinent information about the forces and progress of change, interactive “transformation sessions” in which a cross-section of the organization co-creates a vision and develops the strategy, online employee surveys that query and monitor a work force as it deals with the nuances of change, icons and symbols and signage that visually reinforce change, and (especially) first-line supervisors who are trained and prepared to engage their direct reports in a dialogue about what change means to them – these are (and will remain) vital tools for communicators. But, as powerful as they are, these are formal communication channels operating within the organizational hierarchy. And a single informal channel, the company grapevine, can undermine them all.

In the hallways, around the water cooler or coffee pot, over the telephone, as part of a blog, in rouge web sites, and through e-mail messages, news is exchanged and candid opinions are offered. It is during these “off-line” exchanges and daily conversations that people decide whether or not to support change. Want to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your change communication? Then find ways to identify, involve, and enlist your organization’s social networks and informal opinion leaders.

Question #12 – Are you positioning change as an event or a corporate mindset?
If adaptable, change-adept organizations are what CEOs want, then the only communication strategy that’s going to produce the desired result is one that includes instability as a positive element – and ongoing change as “business as usual.” So, a final question: Are you still referring to change as “the event” or are you positioning it as a constant corporate mindset and vital component of organizational success?

Source: Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., Communitelligence

According an independent survey, we are constantly bombarded with messages, and of around 2000 a day, we will only remember some 65 – hardly a good average.

Source: Peter Drucker in a foreward to a book by Parkinson & Rowe, 1978

Another completely independent survey confirms this very low rate of retention, but goes a step further in looking at the retention for the various means of communication:

• Reading 10% retention
• Hearing 20% retention
• Seeing 30% retention
• Hearing and seeing 50% retention

Source: Warner (1981)

A good definition of the role of change communication is given by David Ferrabee of Hill & Knowlton in his professional blog. I quote:

What is Change and Internal Communication…?

… and why should you care!

Those of us working in the occidental world aren’t really making things as much as we used to. And even if we are manufacturing we have largely taken all the possible cost out of the production cycle.

So what does that leave?

People.

If you look at the financial statements of any FT 100 company you will see that ‘people’ costs make up the majority of the business costs. What do we do about them? How do we help them to work smarter? How do we get them to do what is best for the organisation?

That’s where change & internal communications comes in.

In the first quarter of this year there were 28.61 million people working in the United Kingdom, for example. How many of them know what their organisation is trying to do? How many actually know what they could and should be doing to help?

We’ve been talking to a lot of people in the public sector recently too. Did you know there are 5,818,000 public sector employees in the UK? (It took me £1 and ten minutes to get that information from AQA!) In many ways they have a clearer idea of what they should be doing. But few public sector employees receive effective internal communications. If you compare them to places like Vodafone or Diageo, where internal communications is a fairly advanced science, our friends in the public sector are miles behind.

Who is going to fix all this? Good question.

I think I know a few people.

/df

Source: David Ferrabee

A crisis doesn’t always damage your reputation – responding badly does.

The 10/20/30 Rule for PowerPoint

A PowerPoint presentation should have no more than ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

Source: Let the Good Times Roll, by Guy Kawasaki

We all have people with whom we have to work to get things done. Our ability to communicate with clients, customers, subordinates, peers, and superiors can enhance our effectiveness or sabotage us. Many times, our verbal skills make the difference. Here are 10 ways to increase your verbal efficacy at work:

Develop your voice – A high whiney voice is not perceived to be one of authority. In fact, a high soft voice can make you sound like prey to an aggressive co-worker who is out to make his/her career at the expense of anyone else. Begin doing exercises to lower the pitch of your voice. Here is one to start: Sing — but do it an octave lower on all your favorite songs. Practice this and, after a period of time, your voice will begin to lower.

Slow down – People will perceive you as nervous and unsure of yourself if you talk fast. However, be careful not to slow down to the point where people begin to finish your sentences just to help you finish.

Animate your voice – Avoid a monotone. Use dynamics. Your pitch should raise and lower. Your volume should be soft and loud. Listen to your local TV news anchor; take notes.

Enunciate your words – Speak clearly. Don’t mumble. If people are always saying, “huh,” to you, you are mumbling.

Use appropriate volume – Use a volume that is appropriate for the setting. Speak more softly when you are alone and close. Speak louder when you are speaking to larger groups or across larger spaces.

Pronounce your words correctly – People will judge your competency through your vocabulary. If you aren’t sure how to say a word, don’t use it.

Use the right words – If you’re not sure of the meaning of a word, don’t use it. Start a program of learning a new word a day. Use it sometime in your conversations during the day.

Make eye contact – I know a person who is very competent in her job. However, when she speaks to individuals or groups, she does so with her eyes shut. When she opens them periodically, she stares off in a direction away from the listener. She is perceived as incompetent by those with whom she consults. One technique to help with this is to consciously look into one of the listener’s eyes and then move to the other. Going back and forth between the two (and I hope they only have two) makes your eyes appear to sparkle. Another trick is to imagine a letter “T” on the listener’s face with the cross bar being an imaginary line across the eye brows and the vertical line coming down the center of the nose. Keep your eyes scanning that “T” zone.

Use gestures – Make your whole body talk. Use smaller gestures for individuals and small groups. The gestures should get larger as the group that one is addressing increases in size.

Don’t send mixed messages – Make your words, gestures, facial expressions, tone, and message match. Disciplining an employee while smiling sends a mixed message and, therefore, is ineffective. If you have to deliver a negative message, make your words, facial expressions, and tone match the message.

Improving your communication skills will improve your productivity.

Source: Open Loops