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Update nowOur business change consultants interview Caroline Gosling on communication to enable change
In our first of a series of interviews with senior business leaders, we talk to Caroline Gosling, Director of Culture & Engagement to discuss how effective internal communication enables change.
I think there are three things that stand out, which are all linked:
By listening and paying attention (and believing what you hear) you can get a sense of how and where change is needed, where things are likely to get stuck and the best way to execute the change. At its most simple, you need to have a grasp of what people want to hear as well as what you want to tell them.
It’s easy as a leadership or project team to think our job is to ‘workout the answer’ and then worry about telling people afterwards. As a result, communication is often seen as ‘the bit you do at the end’, and is done poorly or as an after-thought.
Instead, think about how you can create shared understanding over time, build interest and ‘pull’ on the change and enlist parts of the organisation that are already responding to whatever is driving the need for change (there will be some!) is a more effective approach. I know that if someone just tells me what to do without me understanding the point of it, I tend not to do it!
A ‘tell them when we’ve worked out what to do’ approach is sometimes useful (emergencies are a good example!) but generally it underestimates the importance of collaboration and talking about things along the way. It also overestimates what a single communication will achieve. We often put all our faith in a few pieces of carefully worded comms with the hope that once we’ve sent an email and they’ve seen it, they will understand it, buy into it and change the behaviours that are often very ingrained in individuals and the organisational culture. Humans usually don’t work that way.
In reality, 90% won’t read that carefully crafted communication and many of those that do won’t find it relevant or meaningful. Sharing the rational facts about change isn’t enough for people to want to change and misses the opportunity for them to be involved and make sense of the change and associated process.
Ideally any comms around change will be multi-faceted, multi-way (not just top down but bottom up and peer to peer) and you’d have a blend of information and conversation that evolves on an ongoing basis throughout the change.
There are two recent moments:
Unforeseen circumstances happen all the time! Very simply I think you need a plan – have a structure for your comms and a strong idea of the story you want to build and that you’ve created this via insight and input from the people who are going to make the change happen (including but not only the project team or leadership).
Once you have a plan, to consciously choose to stay flexible and responsive. Stuff emerges over time, things that seemed like they’d be a no brainer turn out to be potential derailers. That’s why involvement of people who are in the organisational reality is so critical and why collaboration and connection is such a determinant of success.
The most fundamental piece I think is:
Involve people early and widely, know what you are trying to cause, get your story straight and be prepared to evolve it if people’s words and behaviour are telling you it’s not working.
I also think leaders (however you define them) need to be willing and able to take a hard look at themselves and find people who will hold them to account for making the same behaviour changes they are asking of others – easy to say and very hard to do in my experience!
So many things. In his book ‘The Open Organisation’, Jim Whitehouse talks about Red Hat’s approach of spending a lot of time upfront and in a dialogue about proposed changes. He says it can be a painful and lengthy process, but once you get to implementation of the change everything then accelerates. I’d like to continue to explore how engagement and involvement doesn’t just drive change but creates a responsive organisation. A group of colleagues that have the capability and motivation to make the necessary changes intuitively and organically but not chaotically – instead, aligned around a common purpose and understanding of the organisation’s role in the world. It’s a great time to be working in this area as organisations think hard about who they are, why they exist and how to operate in the future. Lots to learn!