Free Leadership Article
Communicating Change
You cannot over-communicate about change, but you can communicate the wrong way. Change-savvy leaders craft a communication strategy with the same gusto as a marketing plan and there are a number of tricks-of-the-trade that you should use.
Trick-of-the-Trade 1
Be clear about what the change involves (and doesn’t involve) and why you are planning to make this change. Think through it until you can explain it out aloud in 30 seconds or less.
Trick-of-the-Trade 2
Deliver your initial message about the change through a small group, face-to-face meeting or meetings. When doing this, frame the change in terms of how it helps your audience avoid potential problems in the future, or how it helps them address existing problems right now. If you have managing reporting to you, have them do the same with their staff. Use this same cascading, small group meeting method until all affected stakeholders are aware of the change because it allows you (or your managers) to present the idea in terms that are relevant to the group concerned, and it allows staff to quickly clarify any misconceptions.
Trick-of-the-Trade 3
Make a formal announcement about the change only once the initial small group meetings have finished. Use metaphors, analogies and stories in your announcement to help people make sense of what may be new to them. For example, you may or may not be aware of the outcomes based education which dominated Australian schools in 1990s and early 2000s, yet when it is explained using a metaphor – outcomes education is like teaching martial arts, you match teach children where they are at rather than according to the grade level they are in – it becomes much easier to grasp. Couple this with a powerful slogan such as Teaching Children Where They At and you further enhance this message.
Trick-of-the-Trade 4
If the change is significant, reinforce the messages of this initial announcement over the coming months. You can do this through creating a fact sheets, frequently asked questions and promotional material incorporating your agreed slogan. This can be further reinforced by sprinkling the what and the why of the change in all sorts of formal and informal communications.
