Change Communications

TOP FIVE TIPS: Helping employees adapt to change

The role of leaders during change is to create meaning, focus anddirection by explaining the company’s actions. The challenge for themis to help employees move past the psychological stages of shock,delusion, anger and depression to the stages where they let go oftheir old ties and explore the possibilities of the new situation.Business psychologist Marie Mosely outlines five possible tactics tofacilitate this:

1. Use storytelling to create links: Stories help to create meaning ina chaotic world. People need some sense of predictability andstability, particularly when they’re going through restructures andtransitions. Stories help staff to understand links between the past,present and future. They are universal and understood in alllanguages and by all cultures. They engage people and, if told well,create a positive anticipation for the future.

2. Build scenarios for the future: Get people thinking about how theywould like the story to end. Scenario building helps people tounderstand the challenges ahead. It creates relevance and meaning andlinks the past with the possible futures. It cuts through theday-to-day beliefs and assumptions that can blinker an organizationand its people, and it creates a positive self-belief that, whateverhappens, they can cope. It also helps people focus on how they mightbest use their time, effort, talents and skills.

3. Use internal communication effectively: Make sure that internalcommunication systems are as effective as they can be. Spending a lotof time and money on external communications is a waste if employeesare demotivated and don’t know what’s happening or where theorganization is going. They will either clam up or communicate inrumors.

4. Create discomfort: In order to move from our current state, weneed to create discomfort. Comfort creates acceptance and inaction.People change the way they are doing things for two reasons:inspiration or desperation. Leaders need to encourage staff to bemotivated by both.

5. Challenge successful models: Successful models are hard tochallenge but people often maintain the status quo with processes andprocedures that work now, when they should be thinking about what’s onthe horizon and how it will affect the business in the future.

This is an abstract from an article that first appeared in StrategicCommunication Management, Vol 7, Issue 4 (June/July 2003). To purchase a copy, visit: http://www.melcrum.com/cgi-bin/melcrum/eu_content.pl?docurl=pub%20scm%20home

In the Harvard Business School monthly, an article by John Kottereight common
errors in organizational change efforts:

1. Allowing too much complacency and not creating enough sense of urgency: the burning platform
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful coalition to guide the change (management commitment)
3. Underestimating the power of vision (“why are we doing this ?”)
4. Under-communicating the vision by a large factor
5. Permitting obstacles to remain and block the progress
6. Failing to create short-term wins to demonstrate success and to give people a chance to celebrate
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor the change securely in the corporate culture

Source: Kotter, Leading Change, Harvard Business Review

Source: The Empowerment Group (TEG) – Inform, Involve, Empower

Consulting Process

TEG’s core approach is co-development – that is, change only happens when it is owned and developed by those it affects. They use a variety of interactive tools to facilitate a process that puts the change in context and provides the resources to help people influence the proposed changes.

To accomplish this they use a variety of approaches depending on each situation. Key skills are:

• Identifying problems, obstacles, opportunities
• Fresh approaches and perspectives
• External objectivity
• Professionally trained and adept listening
• Focus on actions and deliverables

Values and Beliefs

• You own what you help develop
• People learn best from their own experience
• The most effective communication is short, simple and engaging
• The manager is the key communicator – given the support to accomplish the task
• Digital communication is transforming organisational communication

Co-development

Source: Gestalt.org

Conventional therapies that direct themselves to the past and to individual history do so under the assumption that if an individual once resolves the issues around a traumatic personal event (usually in infancy or childhood), he will be prepared for all time to deal with the world; for the world is considered a stable order. Today, however, the problem becomes one of discerning where one stands in relationship to a shifting society. Confronted with a pluralistic, multifaceted, changing system, the individual is left to his own devices to find stability. He must do this through an approach that allows him to move dynamically and flexibly with the times while still maintaining some central gyroscope to guide him. He can no longer do this with ideologies, which become obsolete, but must do it with a change theory, whether explicit or implicit. The goal of therapy becomes not so much to develop a good, fixed character but to be able to move with the times while retaining some individual stability.

[...]

The analytic therapist, by contrast, uses devices such as dreams, free associations, transference, and interpretation to achieve insight that, in turn, may lead to change. The behaviorist therapist rewards or punishes behavior in order to modify it. The Gestalt therapist believes in encouraging the patient to enter and become whatever he is experiencing at the moment. He believes with Proust, “To heal a suffering one must experience it to the full.” Change does not take place through a coercive attempt by the individual or by another person to change him, but it does take place if one takes the time and effort to be what he is — to be fully invested in his current positions. By rejecting the role of change agent, we make meaningful and orderly change possible.

[...]

The Gestalt therapist rejects the role of “changer,” for his strategy is to encourage, even insist, that the patient be where and what he is. He believes change does not take place by “trying,” coercion, or persuasion, or by insight, interpretation, or any other such means. Rather, change can occur when the patient abandons, at least for the moment, what he would like to become and attempts to be what he is. The premise is that one must stand in one place in order to have firm footing to move and that it is difficult or impossible to move without that footing.

[...]

I believe that the same change theory outlined here is also applicable to social systems, that orderly change within social systems is in the direction of integration and holism; further, that the social-change agent has as his major function to ‘work with and in an organization so that it can change consistently with the changing dynamic equilibrium both within and outside the organization. This requires that the system become conscious of alienated fragments within and without so it can bring them into the main functional activities by processes similar to identification in the individual. First, there is an awareness within the system that an alienated fragment exists; next that fragment is accepted as a legitimate outgrowth of a functional need that is then explicitly and deliberately mobilized and given power to operate as an explicit force. This, in turn. leads to communication with other subsystems and facilitates an integrated, harmonious development of the whole system.

[...]

The quickest path to growthful change is not via force (our own or someone else’s) but through fully embracing the person we are.

Source: Melcrum Publishing, with thanks to Margaret Helsabeck, Lockheed Martin

Follow this checklist of questions to help you assess the potential impact of organizational change.

Do I have support from the top?

This is a “must have” if the change is to affect the entire organization. Without it, even the most passionate cause will fail. You also need more than a verbal commitment: you need active demonstration from the responsible executive that this is an important change.

How will the change impact people?

Try to determine how the change will make people feel. There is usually resistance to any change. For a successful change project you need to understand the likely level of resistance so you can plan how to deal with it.

How will resistance look?

Your aim as an agent of change is to get support and acceptance of the change. The biggest obstacle to successful change is resistance. If people are negative, don’t want to listen and seem to want to attack you, then you need to spend some time understanding their position and responding to their feelings before you bombard them with more information.

What actions can I take to manage resistance?

Resistance occurs on different levels. Your response needs to be appropriate for the level of resistance encountered. Information overload may strengthen the resistance, not resolve it. If resistance is high, you will need to rely on good listening skills to better understand the issues associated with the change.

How do I gain support from colleagues?

Spend time with people who have influence to explain the proposed change and your plans for communicating it. Get your employee involved and actively helping you in the communications. Face-to-face communication between managers and employees is highly appreciated and should not be underestimated. Try to get as much of the management team as possible repeating the key messages of the change and talking to employees about it.

Overriding principles:

Change ahead: urgency!

• Transmit need to change, need to prepare in all communications: use of countdown clocks, timelines.
• Harkness & Kennett study: Over 50% of companies fail in the first phase if change by not establishing a great enough sense of urgency.
• A unique identity (logo, mascot, look and feel) helps to differentiate from many other change programmes competing for employee attention.

Clear & credible

• Active management involvement in content, thorough proof-reading and validation
• Unclear situations: not always possible to communicate an answer – clear honest communication better than nothing.
• Address “What is in it for me” and no more…

Enable and support local messages

• Creation and support of a network of field communicator, provide resources…
• Study into who do employees want to hear from? (Prosci’s Best Practices in Managing Change report, 2003)
• 31% their supervisor/line manager
• 25% CEO or President level
• 11% Change management team

Communication strategy:

Considerable management involvement and buy-in

• Monthly “communication committee” to agree direction, actions and content with all key parties concerned.
• Essential: communicator cannot work in isolation. Requires support and involvement of project management.

Communication plan:

• Gives overview of planned actions. Essential for management understanding and serves as basis for discussions/planning

Actions adapted to each phase of change cycle:

• Change curve well known. Can be summarised as a period of pre-contact, contact and post contact. Communication requirements not at all the same for each period.
• Newsletter, Web = ongoing;
• Kick-off meetings, posters, workshops, brochures/guides = pre-contact/un-freezing;
• Daily communications (progress, updates) = contact/changing;
• Communication of achievement, results, surveys = post contact/re-freezing.

• Focused on specific audience groups and particular needs

• Stakeholder matrix allows for mapping of communication actions to a phase of change and to a clear target audience and a clear communication requirement.

• Innovative communication tools (mix of traditional comms and use of technology)

• Technology can be effective and useful but not solution to all. Face-to-face communications and paper communication essential in achieving change. Must not be underestimated. People need something to hold and look at. Result: hybrid communication tools adapted to deployment needs. Attention: information overload, dangers of “just sending out another email”.

• Mechanism for feedback

• Essential for evolving approach. Various channels (management, communicators,
  team, web surveys).

Network of communicators:

• Put change communications on agenda of local management / steerco

• Create local ambassadors. Speak “their language”. More credible to those receiving message.

• Integrate change messages into local communications

• Change is not just something coming from afar… “concerns us locally too”

• Support project communications

• Relay messages, print and distribute locally…

• Raise feedback and questions

• Important gauge of needs in the field.

Source: Nicholas Ranken

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The Lawson Project covers of the set-up, integration and deployment of the Lawson ERP financial suite and associated business systems to the worldwide locations of a major oilfield services company.

I have been working as Communication Coordinator as part of the Change Management team since the pilot phase three years ago. This blog contains my experiences and thoughts collected during this time.

Teams from Atos Origin have played key roles in areas such as security and configuration management, industrialization of the production system and change management.

Since October 2001, a team of up to 80 Atos Origin consultants (from Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK) has worked in close collaboration with teams from our client, Lawson Software and Hitachi Consulting.

The Lawson Project business system solution consists of a series of best of breed systems: Lawson, Siebel (OFS Invoicer), Business Intelligence (OFS Reporter) and integration with CommerceOne e-procurement marketplace (SWPS).

Overview of the business system solution deployed.

The ambitious deployment objectives and aggressive timelines were consistently met on time and within budget.

Benefits experienced by our client include:

• Global and integrated business system for all geographical areas excluding North America
• Centralised and standardised systems architecture
• Almost ‘real-time’ business intelligence
• Reduced effort in data entry, greater quality control
• Less IT support at field level

Approximately 6000 users in 115 countries across the world are now working with the new systems.

Nicholas Ranken