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Change Management Communications:
6 Imperatives for Success

March 15, 2011  |  No Comments

These six guidelines will make it easier to maximize support for even the most dramatic changes.

Communication Opportunities Emerge
With Specifics on Healthcare Reform

June 30, 2010  |  No Comments

While this is a period of frustrating uncertainty for anyone involved with communicating about healthcare reform, it’s also a time of tremendous opportunity.

Disdain for Plain English Can Doom
Promising Change Management Plans

March 14, 2010  |  4 Comments

Not long ago, a client sent me a piece of communication, written by a colleague, and asked me if I could rework it. Believe it or not, this is how it began [specifics concealed]:

“[Company] in partnership with [Big Consulting Firm]  is conducting a 90 Day [Department] study championed by [Executive’s Name], [Executive’s Lengthy Title], that supports understanding our business and Go-To Market strategies while leveraging existing functional strategies in Manufacturing, Logistics, Procurement, IT, as well as broader global blueprints from Europe and Latin America to define a transformational roadmap for our future.”

Fortunately, we worked this clicheosaurus into something meaningful.

But unfortunately, some communication like this is actually distributed. And tragically, such communication is often used to support major organizational changes, like combining businesses, shifting information systems, imposing new processes, shuffling staff or consolidating locations.

Why Communication is Important

Poor communication at the outset of a challenging organizational change can ruin its chances for success.  Because employees, customers, suppliers and distributors are people, they:

  • Need to understand a change before they can even begin to support it, let alone advocate it.
  • May look unfavorably on something that is so shrouded in unclear language that there seems to be a conscious effort to hide what’s happening.

According to a 2007 study by the Computer Technology Industry Association, the top reason major information technology projects fail is poor communication.

Common Sense Goes a Long Way

Because of financial constraints, some critical corporate projects won’t get the benefit of professional communications resources. But common sense can go a long way toward harnessing the power of plain English.

Here are a couple imperatives for communication in the change management arena:

  • Focus on the audience. Good communicators consider what the reader needs to receive in order to understand and embrace something.  Look at your writing through a reader’s eye.
  • Be honest. Even issues that are difficult are based on some rationale. Learn that rationale and use it as support to communicate honestly. That will advance your project more effectively than hedging and vagueness, which ruin credibility.

For more about the role of good communication in making good things happen, watch this blog. If you have a point of view on this rich subject, share it in the comment box.

Adjustments at GM Plant Lend
Insight For Surviving Downturn

January 07, 2010  |  No Comments

GM's Lordstown car plant (New York Times photo).

Tuesday’s New York Times story about labor peace at a once-militant Ohio factory points up one of the silver linings of this recession: the promise of better days for survivors.

The story (read it here) covers the compromises union workers have made in the past two years at a General Motors car plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Once a morass of labor strife and poor workmanship, the plant west of Youngstown is now among the few left standing after GM’s harsh two-year round of closings and layoffs. Lordstown’s 3,000 employees are now preparing to build the Chevrolet Cruze, a linchpin in GM’s strategy for the next decade.

Survival is always good. But when this the worst downturn since the Depression finally ends, any organization left standing will by necessity have become leaner and stronger, likely on the strength of drastic adjustments it had not been forced to consider when times were good. It will have fewer competitors.

This will be as true of small businesses and non-profits as it will for General Motors, Boeing, Citi and other behemoths that appear to be turning the corner.

But if the experience recounted by the Times in Ohio is any guide, the road to survival will not have been easy.  Employees at the Lordstown plant took sharp pay cuts. They voted to relax work rules that stood for decades – the ones that survived the last round of harsh compromises in the early 1980s. They changed their attitudes.

“When General Motors had such a big percentage of the market, our fears weren’t there,” unionist Ben Strickland tells the Times. “There wasn’t a trump card that we didn’t pull. Now you’ve got to be careful about pulling those trump cards out because it could be your last. We want G.M. to be successful. We want the U.A.W. to be successful. Making that happen on both sides, that creates security.”

The economic and attitude adjustments that have made Lordstown a survivor provide good insight for any organization pursuing that same promise.