Change Communication

Getting the organisation on board when implementing a new strategy, a new system or new processes continues to be one of management’s greatest headaches.

Despite acknowledgement that communication is key when implementing change, change efforts often fall short due to poorly designed communication. In this article, we describe some common misconceptions regarding change communication and share seven simple steps to make it more effective.

Most change initiatives start with the best intentions: to improve or optimise one or more aspects of the organisation’s daily operations. The problem is that most initiatives tend not to progress beyond the initiative stage. More than 70% of all change initiatives are considered to fall short in terms of their original intent. Why does change often die with the project that was supposed to foster it?

One overarching constraint is that the ability to provide clarity and engagement throughout a project is rare. A study conducted by Project Management Institute comes to the conclusion that poorly managed communication is to blame in more than 50% of failed efforts. In contrast, projects with effective communication achieve their objectives 80% of the time. Taking into account how vital it is for the success of businesses to implement change successfully, it is paradoxical how permissive many people are when managing communication. Often, change communication is assigned to the project manager as an additional task or simply omitted altogether.

Effective change communication does not just happen by accident. It is the result of an in-depth analysis and clear identification of issues related to motivation among employees, as well as obstacles and resistance to change. It should start well before the actual implementation phase and go beyond merely conveying facts and figures. The latter is particularly important – because anyone who thinks they can simply rationalise the change merely succumbs to the illusion that real communication has taken place. In truth, this can at best be regarded as information.

Information vs communication

Information and communication are not the same, and effective change communication needs to balance the two.

Information is a one-way street, typically formal in its tone and appealing to people’s rationality by comprising facts, KPIs, plans and roadmaps.

Communication, on the other hand, takes the form of storytelling that puts things into perspective, encourages sense-making and starts meaningful conversations. Communication has a more emotional appeal and, working in this field, we strongly believe that when it comes to organisational change, this form of appeal is more effective than logic and executive ethos.

Most projects contain plenty of information, being full of numbers, checklists and plans. Strategy is pushed out by managers at meetings and in presentations and emails. This isn’t the way to win people over, because there is a total absence of willingness to involve and engage people and start conversations. Often, projects completely lack communication.

The successful implementation of change initiatives should start with the realisation that regardless of the objective and the content of the change, it is essentially about people who have to act differently tomorrow than they did yesterday. And people are anything but purely rational beings who behave according to the ideal of homo economicus. Decisions are not always made based on an all-encompassing pool of information and after weighing up all the advantages and disadvantages, but are instead made based on gut feeling. Uneasiness or even resistance to change does not always arise from a mere lack of information and can therefore be resolved much less frequently than expected by rational arguments.

A well-conceived communication strategy should therefore aim for a balance between rational and emotional elements. Without this balance, chances are that the desired change the project was intended to bring about will be doomed before it has ever had a chance to succeed.