🎼 Communicating Change like an Orchestra Conductor
🎼 Communicating Change like an Orchestra Conductor
14 Recommendations for Successful Change Communications
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If we created a work playlist for the past two and a half years, many of the songs would be about change — folk music for the nostalgic moments, blues for the tough times and classical music for the calming memories.
When it comes to change communications, Internal comms hopes for harmony as the orchestra conductor of the work symphony — bringing together different teams and perspectives to share an aligned message at the same time, keeping everyone in tune and ideally inspired.
I gathered advice from leaders featured on The Switchboard for ways to approach change communications. These are their 14 top recommendations.
What would you add to the list — whether it’s something you wish you had done or a best practice? Comment with your suggestions below.
14 Recommendations for Successful Change Communications
🎱 #1 Understand and Diagnose
“Before you make any major announcement or change, where possible, try to understand the current situation and how people are feeling. Is it a much-loved leader leaving the business? Is the change something people know is coming? Do they understand the why behind the change? Or will it cause controversy and chaos for people?
Even if the turnaround is tight — the same day or in the next hour — trying to get even a little bit of context before you announce a change can prevent a lot of reactive work down the line. I talk to leaders about allowing me to be the dumbest person in the room. You need to be able to ask the hard questions to really understand what the change is and how it will impact people.” –Hannah O’Brien
🎫 #2 Focus on Your Audiences
“When thinking of change management, you have to be audience-centric. Think less about what you want to communicate and more about what they care about. Often we are so focused on our key points or messages that we lose sight of what the audience wants to hear. I really like Brene Brown’s advice on giving feedback that “clear is kind.” I try to channel this when communicating change — less is more, simple and straightforward works best.” -Tracey Pavlishin
“Too often in change management, leaders think, "what do I want to share with the team?" A better starting point is to begin by understanding your audiences — what are their big-picture concerns, and what are their day-to-day worries? From there you can shape your change management communications to meet your audiences where they are (rather than where you want them to be).” -Toby Frankenstein
🧡 #3 Consider the Individual
“Start from the middle and work your way out. The people most impacted by a change need a high-touch approach and should ideally be told about the change directly by the manager in a one-on-one setting. If this isn't possible keep the communication as targeted as possible. Those less impacted can learn of a change later and in a more broad way.” -Patrick Holmes
🎻 #4 Create Consistency, Clarity and Certainty
“Communicating change requires careful thought and attention. I encourage internal communicators to focus on consistency, clarity and certainty when communicating change. Be consistent in your approach: keep the promises you make to employees. Use organisational insights to make smart choices around channels and content. Provide clarity: create sources of truth and accurate information. Dispel myths and reinforce the facts by ensuring line managers are equipped to have quality conversations. Create certainty: cut through ambiguity to cite your known knowns and known unknowns.
Publish what you know, for example timelines or sequencing of events. The key to successful change communication is to provide opportunities to listen to people at all levels. You need to know the sentiment, be aware of their fears and tailor your communication to create a line of sight through the change.” -Rachel Miller
❤️ #5 Maintain Humanity
“These aren't always easy announcements to make. It's important to remember, as you're creating your plan, that human beings are going to feel an impact as a result of learning this new information. Kim Clark said this during a training that really stuck with me: "Change feels hard when it feels like it's being done TO you, not WITH you." It's important to bring people along the journey so they can understand the why behind the change, and so that they feel included in the process.
Try to anticipate any concerns, questions, and feedback they might have, and proactively work that into your strategy. Understanding these nuances takes some time, and you may encounter some resistance from your internal business partners or executives who want the communication out the door quickly. People may be initially resistant to change, but with time comes acceptance. And acceptance will come sooner once we maintain humanity in our communications. Also, leadership needs to be on board; they need to model the desired behaviors. Their teams are looking at them.” -Cheryl Magat
🧭 #6 Lead with Values
“Get outside your own perspective. You've spent weeks, maybe months deep in the details and rationale for the changes, but your employees will likely be hearing about them for the first time. They also have different priorities and areas of focus than you do as a leadership team. So be sure to lead with what you do all share — your corporate values — and how the changes will support these enduring values in a changing world.” -Diane Tate
📺 #7 Embrace Multiple Formats and Channels
“Make permeation your priority. That is, understand that it's not enough to make just one announcement. Internal communications plays a vital two-way role, sharing messaging from leadership to employees while sharing employee sentiment back to leaders, so there are opportunities to get creative with where and how frequently you share messages.
Take advantage of every format that feels relevant. Memos, all-hands meetings, infographics, and short videos posted directly to Slack are all formats that my teams have used to connect with our colleagues.” -Adrian J. Hopkins
🧰 #8 Take Care of Yourself and Keep it Simple
“Internal comms have a tough job! They need to absorb and communicate changes in a way that steadies the ship throughout a change, even when they are impacted by the change themselves. My first piece of advice would be to ensure you are taking care of your own wellbeing and expectations, and ask for support where you need it.
Apart from that, really think about what the employees need to know in addition to what leadership wants to communicate. Oftentimes, the real impact to employees can get lost in the messaging which causes frustration. Effective communications come from simplifying the messaging that leaders want to get across while ensuring employees clearly understand what is changing for them (and what they can do about it).” -Surbhi Ugra
📅 #9 Check Your Dates
“This may sound obvious, but I cannot stress how important it is to check your dates! Create a detailed timeline to execute the plan, and make sure every critical player is available to do their part — whether it's your CEO sending an email, your general counsel signing off on sensitive language, or anything else that has to happen for the comms to be successful. I've seen so many well-thought-out plans derail at the last minute because someone forgot to check everyone's schedule.” -Brianna Barker, Senior Director, Employee Communications, PBS
💌 #10 Build Relationships and Offer Support
“Establish relationships early on with the actual project team and position yourself as a resource that can help them from the very beginning. Offer to help set up listening sessions with employees. Help them think about the changes and anticipated benefits at the employee level, in addition to the business level.
Their pressures to implement and launch need to be balanced with how it will actually land with the employee base. If the change isn’t thought through and doesn’t land well, adoption will suffer and you’ll be setting yourself up for cultivating a workforce resistant to change.” -Chase Warner
🔌 #11 Appreciate the Grounding Plug
“Changes charge up emotion, but every situation has a "ground." I started thinking of electrical plugs while writing one of my change management plans. There are opposing currents — those that want the change and those that are resistant to it. But there's also the grounding plug — something that takes the danger out of the situation, that keeps everyone flowing in a positive direction.
Sometimes people stay grounded in the facts: "a major revenue drop means we have to let people go." Perhaps "our annual employee survey results indicate that most people want a flatter organization, so we are re-organizing." This works because it is the 'ground truth' and is universally accepted by everyone involved.” -Laura Hunter
💛 #12 Cultivate Trust and Engage Managers
“Trust is critical, but that is not the same thing as being 100% transparent all the time. Be honest with your employees about what’s happening and when to expect new information. It is also okay to say you do not have all the information or cannot share all the information. Employees will appreciate the candor. Finally, inform people managers, or at least your senior leadership, before announcing the change. While changes should be announced by the CEO/president, immediately after, employees will want to talk to their managers about what it means for them. Ensuring those managers are aligned and “in the boat” will lead to better outcomes.” -Jesse Comart
“People generally don't like change because change means uncertainty, and uncertainty erodes trust. To mitigate that uncertainty, internal comms people need to have two north stars from the outset: 1) A clear understanding of their audience(s) (normally just employees, but are there other parties to consider?) and 2) An understanding that the primary focus of all internal comms during a change management process has to be maintaining and building trust.
That's because on the other side of the change, you need to keep your people believing in the company and it's leadership, and wanting to move forward together. They won't do that if they don't trust you. So at every junction, every time you need to make a decision, you should ask yourself, what is my audience worried about? How can I address that head-on? Which of these options builds the most trust?” -Camilla Boyer
🚗 #13 Consider the Driver
“The driver of a change definitely has feelings about it — even if they're not showing them. Most of the time, the person driving the change has been thinking about this for a long time: they're tired of planning for it and worrying about it and are anxious to get to the impact of the change.
Sometimes this comes across as callousness, but every time I've taken a moment to acknowledge how long they've been sitting with the need for this change and that they are likely being pressured to change even faster by their boss or constituents, the working relationship smooths out a bit because they also feel heard and acknowledged. This can seem like a strange idea to focus on — as it seems like the person instigating a change is the one with all the power, but dynamics are complex and so are people.” -Laura Hunter
📏 #14 Measure and Adapt
“Okay, so you've communicated the {insert change}. The real work starts here.
Now you should start to seek feedback, and understand where there are gaps in knowledge or questions you might not have thought to cover.
Monitoring where there might be sensitivities, reactions or a need for more clarity will allow you to iterate, build on resources like FAQs and tweak future communication.” –Hannah O’Brien
Thank you to the leaders who contributed to this article. What advice for change communications would you add to the list below?
Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every edition is personally curated by me — Julia Levy. Help me celebrate Kindness at Work this month!
