He’d score low on our change management metrics.

We were asked recently to identify the most critical imperatives for communicating major changes in a corporate environment.

And although we would never suggest that change is easy, these six guidelines will certainly make it easier to maximize support for even the most dramatic changes.  

• Tell the Truth: Be clear and forthright about exactly what’s happening. Blurriness and hedging can undermine trust and dilute the support needed to embed change. Come clean with the facts and the rationale for the change.|
• Make the Case: There’s a reason you’re making these changes. Don’t be shy about conveying it. Employees and other key audiences need to know our rationale—even if they do not agree with it. A good case will maximize support and limit resistance.
• Be Consistent: Get a foundational FAQ and key facts and messages in place early and make sure key managers understand them. Don’t suffer any wildcat messages, even if they’re accurate. Consistency in look is important, too.
• Use Plain English: Gobbledygook, bureaucrat-ese and other forms of poor language come off as fudging or hiding. Communicate benefits clearly and sharply, even if employees are not used to it, in order to nurture understanding and acceptance. 
  
• Measure and Monitor: Surveys that measure awareness and understanding are easy. Knowing where the needle rests is important to moving it. Allow for comments. Employees and others appreciate the chance to add input.
• Make it Fun. Even if the subject matter is dry, the communication can add spark. One client even let us do a comic strip that advanced a major change initiative by, in part, lampooning the as-is environment.

If you’d like a PDF of our communications imperatives for change management, you can download it here.   

If you have a point of view on this subject, we welcome your comments below.   

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Dan Pecchia is a change management communications consultant based in Youngstown, Ohio. He’s served in communications lead roles with Whirlpool, Timken, AkzoNobel Paints, Republic Engineered Products and others.

Over 300 packed a recent healthcare reform seminar sponsored in Youngstown by Anthem and the Regional Chamber.

Communication around healthcare reform reached a fever pitch in March when Congress passed the controversial reform bill. But those were certainly not the last words on the subject.

In the past three months, backers and critics have geared up to battle over the specific rules of the reform. The federal law has been challenged in court by 20 state governments.

And in the workplace, business leaders are trying to define the impact of the new law on their employees and shareholders.

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

There’s nothing like change to drive demand for strategic, clear and concise communication, and healthcare reform will bring major change.

Don’t just wait for specifics to emerge

As far as the specific impact of healthcare reform, there are certainly many questions that cannot yet be answered.

But there is work to do now on the communications front, and here are some steps communications leaders can be taking.

• Sharpen the communications channels. This may finally be the time to update the website, finalize the email version of the newsletter, clean up the bugs in the employee portal or start those regular brown-bag lunch meetings. Is two-way communication a reality yet?
• Learn the primary concerns of your publics. What do they want to know or need to know? Maybe it’s time to get moving on that survey software you’ve put in a file for the right time. At some point, it will be too late for surveys.
• Get familiar with the new concepts the law will introduce, like insurance exchanges and grandfathering. The White House has an extensive FAQ online, and various activists and consultants have posted information as well. But much of it is slanted, generic or both, and not in the least customized to your key publics.
• If you work in an advisory capacity, have a point of view. Some law firms are posting observations about the reform on their blogs, as are some accounting firms. This is a time when companies will need counsel, and proactive advisers will have a lot to gain.

If you’re involved with any other communications strategies that advance understanding of the impending reform, or have a point of view about it, your comments are welcome.

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.

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.