Thinking About Organizational Change?
Communicating the change is just as important as the change itself if you want to realize the benefits of the change.
WHY IT MATTERS: Organizational change can affect nearly every aspect of how an organization operates. And how the information is communicated matters more to your employees than the what is being communicated. Choosing not to communicate or doing so without regard to how your teams receive it will doom your change.
KEY POINTS TO CONSIDER:
1) Know your audience. Understand what your team cares about, what it doesn’t and develop personas of the various audiences that need to hear the message. Realize the views of your audience can change, are not uniform, and can have significant nuance. Make sure to understand how your audience’s views are changing.
2) Ensure your teams know what to expect and that means making sure to convey change clearly. If there are challenging messages to be conveyed, take them on directly and clearly. The more your teams know, the less likely they work to defeat it.
3) Everyone needs to understand the organizational change. You may have different levels of information to convey for different audiences within your organization, but that does not mean some audiences receive no information. Everyone in your organization matters, so treat them like they matter.
Underlying all three of these key points is empathy. Change is hard. Understand how your teams will be impacted and convey change with those considerations in mind to ensure your change achieves its desired goal.