Do you know! 60% of the change projects fail and the common denominator is
poor change communication strategy,
which often leads to low employee morale and gives stress in the company,
relational breakdown between the employer and the employee
and also sometimes loosing critical employees during this journey.
While working with CXO’s from global companies, who are taking on the journey
of Engineering transformation, one of the common concerns we see on their mind is,
how do I communicate change to my wider audience, my employees in this company?
Working with them through all these years, we have developed a strong change communication strategy
and I would like to walk you through the step wise approach.
Step one of the approach is to understand the criticality of all your employees.
Which means, the value that each employee driving for the company, the niche skills sets that
they possess which are critical to the companies regular functioning. Once you made that understanding,
you need to categorize each employee from highly critical to not so critical.
This analysis is goanna to be extremely important and we are going to revisit at a later step.
Step two of the approach is the what we call it as the first communication, the change
leader CXO needs to identify key members from his organization, these we call the
change managers and they will be the frontline messengers of the change but before they can do that,
the CXO or the change leader needs to convince them of his/her vision of the change.
And the strategic approach of the change also, clearly define if this doesn’t happen how
will it negatively impact the company and their careers.
Once he/she is done that, he needs to also demand commitment and accountability from them.
While they work with him/her on this journey.
The third step is now that the change leader is ready with the change manager team,
he can move to the bigger platform and address his entire team about the change initiative.
The critical elements of this conversation will be of course, a passion for the vision
that he lays out and the logical approach to get to that goal but, the most important
element will be the ethos, which is the ethical appeal which connects him to his team members.
This appeal will then add to the credibility and transparency of the approach the change
leader is taking.
The fourth step is important because, when you are talking in a larger audience all information
is not absorbed at all levels. Only its desalinated partially.
So at the fourth step, the change manager
team need to go and talk to wider audience in smaller groups or 1 on 1 meetings to allay their fears.
This is where your analysis of critical to not so critical employee comes in play.
Because, when you are talking to a very critical employees, you need to talk
to them and say they have the place in the future of this organization along with the
clear career development path.
However, when you are talking to a not so critical employees,
it is important to not make any promises to them but, at the same time allay their fears
company will not take any unjust action against them.
All these four steps are goanna be very important but, once these first set of communication
goes out, office care point and fear is gonna take over.
Because, problem with the communication is that the illusion that is already taken place.
Hence, throughout the change journey
it will be important for the change leader and the change managers to connect with the team.
Hence, they should be done as a cyclical process, when there is a early success, the leader should
go out their and celebrate and share with the team. Because it also establishes the
credibility of their approach, the change managers need to keep connected with the smaller
groups 1 on 1 so that, this entire group this community can walk hand in hand towards a
common goal.