Daniel EmmanuelCommunicating Change: A
Dozen Tips from the Experts
(Harvard Management Communication Letter, Vol. 2, No. 8, August
1999)
Change programs. All too often, they’re neither one. They fail to effect change well, and they fail as systematic programs. Usually forgotten in the resulting chaos is the most critical group of all: the employees. Why is the record so bad? Lesson One: Don’t rely on a “Big Bang” announcement to persuade employees to fall in line. It’s never enough.
Nor are existing communication channels adequate to report progress. Such channels often break down in the highly emotional climate that surrounds a change program.
Employees are hungrier than ever for answers and information, says Price Pritchett, a change management expert at Dallas-based Pritchett & Associates. When they don’t get the information they need, they turn to the rumor mill. Pritchett cites a study showing that 20% of an organization’s employees tend to support a change from the start. The rest are either fence sitters (about 50%) or resisters whom nothing can sway (30%). It’s this 80% to whom communications should be directed. William Bridges, author of Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change and consultant to Fortune 500 companies, has found that often a change process meant to strengthen an organization actually weakens it by leaving people confused and resentful when management really needs their commitment. To prevent this, says Bridges, managers need to take pains to communicate effectively throughout the process. Bridges identifies two questions that managers need to ask about their communications:
Following are a dozen tips from the pros on how to make change work.
1. Specify the nature of the change.
Slogans, themes, and phrases don’t define what the change is expected to achieve, says Gary F. Grates, president and CEO of Boxenbaum Grates, Inc., a New York City-based communications firm. Instead, communicate specific information about how the change will affect customer satisfaction, quality of product, market share or sales, or productivity. Says Grates, “Change must be seen in the context of a tangible goal, either on a corporate level — to become first or second in the industry; on a division level — to increase revenue by 20%; or on a department level — to shorten delivery time to two days. ”
2. Explain why.
Employees are often left in the dark about the business reasons behind corporate changes. Alan Brache, director of consulting services for Kepner-Tregoe (Princeton, NJ), believes it’s because the people announcing the change have spent so much time studying the facts that it never occurs to them that their employees don’t know them. In addition to discussing what’s prompting the change, managers should share with employees the various options considered and rejected before they came to the final decision, says Brache.
3. Let employees know the scope of a change even if it’s bad news.
Some changes may affect only a few individuals within the organization, while others may affect everyone. In either case, it’s best to end speculation. While you may be tempted to sugarcoat news, don’t. Joseph Gibbons, a consultant with William M. Mercer’s New York office, advises: “If there will be layoffs, say so. If the company is selling off a division, let employees know.” Gibbons recalls how management at one company felt it couldn’t tell employees it was searching for a buyer because “morale would plummet. ” Morale plummeted anyway as the story seeped out. “The rumors were worse than the reality as employees speculated on buyers with histories of post-purchase layoffs. ”
4. Repeat, repeat, and repeat again the purpose of the change and actions planned.
If the initial announcement doesn’t generate questions, do not assume that employees accept the need for change — it may only mean that the announcement came as a surprise, says Richard Worth, coauthor of The Four Levers of Change. Once employees are back at their desks, then they’ll begin to worry, and that’s when the communication process has to rev up. Follow up that first meeting with a second meeting, and that second meeting with a third, and so forth, to get a dialogue going with employees. “Employees can take bad news; they don’t handle uncertainty as well, ” says T. J. Larkin, president of New York-based Larkin Communication Consulting and coauthor of Communicating Change: Winning Employee Support for New Business Goals. “Uncertainty can kill a company. ” Besides repetition, Larkin suggests dividing communications into “small chunks” so the plan is more easily understood.
5. Use graphics.
Hand-drawn pictures on a flip-chart or an overhead projector can simplify corporate restructures. Whether the new organization looks like a square, triangle, or a giant amoeba, the drawings can help employees visualize the new organization. When management at Sears, Roebuck & Co. was trying to reinvigorate the company, it utilized “learning maps” in small group meetings that showed retail-market trends to explain the company’s need to change, according to Steven P. Kirn, VP of human resources planning and development.
6. Make sure communication is two-way.
Small, informal meetings on a local level enable managers to respond to employee concerns and to gauge the level of likely resistance within the organization. These interactions may unearth ways to make the change plan work better, says Brache, but such meetings don’t commit management to anything more than listening to the employees and responding to their suggestions.
With front-line employees, Larkin decries huge meetings — he calls them the “big bang approach to communication. ” Instead, he advocates small group meetings in which you can truly talk to employees about the change. You also avoid the danger of fringe or hostile groups disrupting a large meeting.
Says Worth, “Change happens at the emotional level, not at the rational level. Informal meetings with employees can go a long way toward a change in heart as well as in head. ”
7. Target supervisors.
All the experts say supervisors should play a key role in corporate change plans, but Larkin goes a step further, suggesting supervisors should communicate the need and nature of the change from the start.
At an offshore oil company, Larkin recalls, supervisors attended half-hour briefing sessions prior to a major change in maintenance operations that would include layoffs. Supervisors were also asked about their concerns regarding the change. Their responses were compiled anonymously into an opinion report for the management team, which then tried to work as many of the recommendations into the plan as possible. The final plan was then shared with the supervisors, who were charged with explaining the change to their employees. Management also developed change booklets to guide face-to-face discussions between the supervisors and their employees.
8. Support change with new learning.
When studies at Owens-Corning showed sales revenue could grow by changing the company’s selling method to emphasize value and relationship, employees were offered training to build credibility in the new method, recalls John Mallin, leader of corporate learning and development. Mallin observes, “The training answered the question, ‘Why should I change how I’ve been selling?’ Elements of good learning include an awareness that you have to change, acceptance of that fact, commitment to the need to change, and fourth, and most important, teaching the appropriate skills to get to the right outcome. ”
9. Point to real progress.
Grates recalls how Greg Brennemen, president and COO of Continental Airlines, found employees didn’t believe that the firm’s change efforts were meaningful until he could point to the fact that all the planes had been painted, the carpets had been replaced, and the lighting in terminals had been improved. Until then, it was only rhetoric to the employees.
10. Don’t limit communications to meetings and print.
As E-mail replaces paper as the main means of internal communications, some managers and employees won’t even look at paper memos or reports. The urgency associated with E-mail increases the likelihood it will be read. At Owens-Corning, weekly E-mail messages from the CEO went to business leaders who forwarded the E-mail down through the organization. Another company created videos that ran continuously in the cafeteria. Says Gibbons, “If you ate, you heard it. Literally, the tapes gave employees facts, not false rumors, to chew on. ” A third organization distributed cassette tapes about its change efforts that managers and employees could play on their commute to and from work.
11. Institutionalize information flow about the change.
Mark Childers, senior vice president of organizational development and human resources at Champion International and coauthor of What Works: A Decade of Change at Champion International, points to a 10-year ongoing effort to keep a 100-plus-year-old company competitive. The company chose to approach the challenge in a systematic way. A companywide cross-functional tea performed a thorough study of how information flowed through the organization. The group discovered that the individual mills didn’t talk often with each other, which meant that there was no mutual learning. Meetings designed to share information got the communication started. But it really heated up when the best-practices participants were given laptop computers. “Operating people burned up cyberspace with their queries, shared experiences, and ideas. ” As the organization has moved to Lotus groupware, the opportunities for mutual learning have grown — and maximizing best practices has become an ongoing goal of manufacturing.
12. Model the changes yourself.
“Managers who talk one way and behave another communicate much more than words, ” reminds Grates, who is also founder and chairman of the Institute for Excellence in Employee-Management Communications (New York City), a think tank on organizational effectiveness. “Too often companies in change efforts don’t do a good enough job to see that their directives are consistent with their own actions. It’s this that has spawned the Dilbert industry. As actions refute words, employees become frustrated and alienated. They stop hearing what management is saying because what it is doing speaks so much louder. ” Worth gets to the point: “Words and actions have to be consistent with the change strategy. Walk the walk, and talk the talk. ”
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