My formula for organizational change involves overcommunication.
Too often, leaders think they are communicating a lot. After all, they are in meetings all day and have an open door policy. How could they not be?
But that’s not how your people see it.
Sure, strategic leaders spend all day talking … but the typical employee has very little time to talk to them.
If you have 30-minute meetings and work ten hours a day, you can meet with a hundred people in a week. That’s assuming you have nothing else to do with your time.
That sounds like a lot.
But what can you learn in 30 minutes?
And how many people do you have under your command or influence your team from outside? Even with this crazy schedule, you can’t talk to everyone.
The result?
From the perspective of a front-line employee, strategic leaders are too distant to communicate frequently.
And much less over-communicating.
If you are driving a change initiative, your people should listen to it every day. They need to read emails, listen to speeches, and talk to their supervisors about it.
And in all these, the messages must be the same.
But how?
If, as a strategic leader, you start emailing your people every day … won’t they disconnect?
If you ask your middle managers to convey messages to your people, won’t they get bored?
The point is, you can easily over-communicate your vision for change without repeating yourself. Consider all the things you can talk about regarding a change initiative:
The reasons for the change and the benefits it will bring.
How the change will transform the organization.
What success looks like. This includes clearly defined goals to meet.
The strategic vision, including the objectives of the change initiative and how to achieve them.
Your personal vision, including what you hope to see as a result of this change.
Your personal stories. This could include small victories you have had or times in the past when this type of problem led to disaster. This is a great opportunity to show that you are leading by example and embracing change.
Any progress made towards the strategic objectives, especially if it led to improvements.
Tips, tricks and tactics. For example: clarify policy changes, point out relevant reference materials, and describe how to handle conflicts under the new system.
Acknowledging the struggle. Change is difficult and stressful. It always requires employees to do extra work and learn new processes, at least in the beginning. It is important to show understanding.
Answer questions and address concerns as they arise.
That’s not even a complete list, but it’s enough to get you started.
After a few cycles of that, your people will understand.
They will understand how and why they are changing.
They will understand that you mean it.
And it won’t take long for you to see that the best way to advance your career is to get on board.
