Five classic mistakes when communicating the need for change
Defining and then communicating the need for change is a crucial part of any Improvement program if you want any commitment from the workforce.
This is not an easy process and there are may ways this can go wrong.
In this guide, we’ll go through five classic mistakes that can be easily made when communicating the need for change for your improvement program.
They’re not prioritised in any particular order so treat them equal priority – they’re all capable of damaging your communications.
Mistake #1: Not clearly articulating the need for change up front
The ‘need for change’ needs to be clearly articulated – ideally explaining the current situation and will happen if no change is made and then what will happen if change is made.
Convincing the workforce that change is needed is a first step in getting the organization committed to the change needed.
Not articulating the ‘need for change’ sufficiently clearly means the workforce will be unconvinced about the need and the support will be lacklustre and the program will fail. As leaders, you need to make it clear that change is needed.
Additionally, at some point in communicating the ‘need for change’, the workforce will want to understand how the change will actually happen. This will, naturally, be where they fully understand the likely impact on them and what they will be asked to do.
Initial communications will have made a strong point for the ‘need for change’ and likely, also, what will happen if no change is made. This messaging is likely to have heavy implications of how the change will be made, but the actual ‘how’ needs to be included in the overall communications.
Define how the organization will get there:
- What will happen ?
- What timing ?
- Expected outcome ?
- What’s needed from the workforce ?
Its better for the workforce to understand upfront what needs to be done and, importantly, what they will need to do.
Mistake #2: Not providing enough senior leadership visibility
Another common issue is little or no senior leadership visibility in delivering the message; this is often an issue of logistics or cost.
It’s relatively easy to communicate one or two levels down but senior leadership trying to reach everyone requires a lot of time both from the senior leadership and also lost workforce production time.
However, if the workforce perceives a lack of senior leadership when delivering a change message then the natural implication is that the need for change is low priority…
All the leadership team need to be visible – and need to make every attempt possible to be visible during these communications.
Mistake #3: Making promises you can’t keep
During the initial townhalls, when the ‘Need for change’ and the vision and roadmap of how to change are first communicated, there is a lot of tension – not surprisingly.
It’s the first time that the workforce get to hear directly from senior leadership what is being planned and what the impact on them will be.
Its also the first time that employees have to directly ask the senior leadership exactly how they will be impacted – and at some point the question (or variant of) will be asked:
‘Will we lose jobs ?’
How senior leadership answers this question is crucial – and they should be well prepared because this question will always come up in some form or other. It’s a fair question and absolutely expected.
One of our team remembers attending a town hall where exactly this question was asked – the response from the senior leader was:
‘No jobs will be lost’ – or something along those lines.
At which point there was stunned silence – you could have heard a pin drop despite the sizeable audience. In their mind, the senior leader answered what they thought was true at the time, but in practice the initial planned program didn’t achieve sufficient improvement and wasn’t enough to get the organization to where they needed to be, and indeed, they did eventually have to make workforce cuts (although largely voluntarily).
However, most of the workforce already had a bleak, pragmatic view of the situation and had correctly surmised that there would be a need to reduce headcount – they just hadn’t heard it confirmed yet by senior leadership.
So what they expected to hear was either –
- yes – job cuts are unfortunately planned and we doing xyz to reduce the impact of this, or,
- no – job cuts are not planned at this stage but we can’t rule this out and we’ll keep you updated on progress on our thinking on this as we progress the improvement program
Saying, definitively, that there would be no job cuts lost the senior leader credibility exactly when they needed it the most, when communicating the need for change at the start of a major Transformation.
So our guidance on this is to be as transparent as you can be and don’t trap yourself into a corner by making an unnecessary promise or commitment that you can’t actually commit to.
Mistake #4: Not communicating enough
A common mistake is simply not communicating enough.
Its easy to under estimate how many times you need to communicate something before people really hear the message. And by ‘hear’, we mean internalise. There are various rules of thumb that say you need to communicate something 7, 10 or even more times before its fully heard.
So don’t assume that one townhall is going to be sufficient. Some organizations might make an initial attempt to communicate the need for change but then don’t follow up and repeat the messaging.
They make the incorrect assumption that the workforce fully understood the initial communication and are working toward the improvement goals.
Additionally, the actual progress during implementation is often not reported enough to the workforce so the workforce have little understanding of the overall position as the Improvement program progresses.
Employees should be hearing the need for change from Senior leadership all the way down to their own leaders. And the messaging should be consistent (although the change stories will naturally vary by leader).
Use multiple channels to communicate the ‘need for change’. Don’t rely on a single communications mode or channel – else you will miss some people entirely.
Use face-to-face communications to first establish the importance and priority of the Improvement program. This can obviously be done easily in small groups but for large groups use townhalls or state of the nation session to really establish your message at the start and to give regular updates (e.g., quarterly).
Use newsletters, regular emails and other online tools if available to constantly reinforce your messaging.
Mistake #5: Not being transparent or authentic
We discussed earlier the need to not make promises you can’t keep and along similar lines you need to be as transparent as you feel able to and also authentic in what say – if you want credibility when delivering your messaging.
If you are telling your team what the organization’s ‘need for change’ is – internalise it in your own words.
There will be multiple official communications that the workforce will hear – and they can likely simply read these themselves.
Add your own views when communicating the ‘need for change’. Your team will want to hear what your personally think, what you personally believe in and what it means to you. It shouldn’t simply be repeated parrot fashion but rather what you believe is the ‘need for change’.
Conclusion
This guide was a brief summary of five common mistakes that are often made when communicating the need for change to the workforce.
Hopefully, you can learn from the mistakes that others have made!