When developing a change communication strategy there is nothing more important that analysing stakeholders.  You need to understand them, segment them into key groups or individuals understanding the level of interest or impact that a change will potentially have on them.

This is because rarely does a “one size fits all” approach work when it comes to change communication.  Who communicates with each stakeholder segment, how we communicate, what we communicate, the frequency and level of detail are all important.

However it is even more important to consider exactly what behaviours does the business need to see changed in order to achieve the desired outcomes and to say our change communication strategy has been successful. The main measure of any change communication strategy has to be contribution to business outcomes.

So here are 10 key things to consider when undertaking a stakeholder analysis:

1. For each stakeholder whether group or individual what is going to change for them?
2. What is their level of support for the proposed changes?
3. Have you identified who you need to work closely with and what change communication activities you can implement to ensure engagement?
4. What will they need to do differently as a result of the changes?
5. Therefore what will they need to know that they don’t know now?
6. What is the best way to support them so that they in turn support the business changes?
7. How can you design change communication activities that will involve them in the process of change rather than simply inform them about the changes?
8. What communication tools work now that you can leverage?
9. What communication tools need to be tweaked slightly so that they can be leveraged rather than replaced?
10. How can you design change communication tools to support the change communication activities between stakeholders?

The worst examples I have seen of stakeholder analysis and engagement plans is a list of stakeholders and the various information tools for each.  By this I mean how regularly you will send emails, have one on one meetings, update the intranet etc.  This is information, and whilst important changes very little in terms of behaviours and engagement.

So if you focus on the above ten points this is a great basis for developing your change communication strategies.  It provides a clear analysis of all segments of your audience, you understand their needs, concerns, and can then work out what involvement activities will assist in facilitating their support.  You then can provide advice to key sponsors of the change program about your strategy to mitigate any possible people issues that could derail a program of change.

And above all, importantly people feel good about the change, you have designed a change communication program that supports them, involves them and rewards them for their commitment.

Most change in organizations today occurs because of large scale project implementation. Very often this involves new technology platforms but sometimes the change is purely a business project change initiative. Unfortunately change management still has a long way to go to establish its fundamental importance to the successful implementation and benefit realisation of those changes. Simply put, most project managers think of change management as something that happens later in the project management life cycle. So let’s talk about why this happens and what as change managers we can do to put it on the agenda.

The first and most important distinction to be made is that as a change manager our role is to enable change to happen, we don’t drive the change. This is usually a huge paradigm shift in thinking for project managers and business leaders as most think that we make change happen, when what we do is advise on the most appropriate tools and techniques to employ at any given time in the change cycle to engage employees in the process of change. It is up to the leaders in the organization to drive change using our recommended strategies to achieve the desired outcomes of a particular project.

The second issue is that most project managers and business leaders think of change management as the “soft stuff” doing the communication, training and human resources requirements of the change. What they fail to understand is that the “soft stuff” is really the fundamental driver of change, a change project, whether focussed on technology or business change is of little value if employees are not engaged in the change itself and the reason for it and therefore the benefits of that change.

So here is a way you can influence the thinking of project managers and business leaders when a new project is on the horizon. Firstly think in terms of how they think, generally they are thinking phases of managing the project lifecycle, so for example the following phases; initiate; plan; build; implement; and close. So firstly think about change management in each of those phases across the “soft side” of business issues such as communication, stakeholder engagement, training, human resources issues and measurement. Then decide what activities, actions and strategies you could recommend to be included in each of these phases and identify the precise benefit to the project manager and business leader for your specific change management advice to be included in each of these phases for the project success.

Even with the focus on the project, the essential ingredient for any successful change program is management and leadership commitment to the proposed strategy. The greatest challenge therefore for change managers is to ensure that leaders do not waiver from the challenges ahead. Change is hard, whether you are at the frontline, or at the executive leadership level. But the most difficult role of all to cope with change is the CEO, because pressures come from leadership team members warning against the changes, there will be unrest amongst staff and questions regarding the strategy. And it is always safer to stay with what is known even if it is not the best outcome for the organization rather than to take a risk to try to innovate and do something new that is untested.

So here’s what can you do to ensure that the focus stays on strategy.
1. Establish a project management team comprised of key leaders that focus on enterprise wide change and dependencies and is chaired by the CEO or department head. This ensures that the silo mentality is broken down as managers are required to adapt to a new process, that is, thinking of their specific project and the impact across the organization, which in turns changes behaviour.
2. From a change communication perspective it is important to ensure that communication is timely and aligned with progress at each of these change meetings. More importantly it is essential to communicate how each project and strategy implementation is aligned with the enterprise wide vision and direction of the organization. This way employees and managers will understand how individual projects are linked and how the organizational strategy is dependent on them all coming together.
3. All members of the leadership team need to be aligned. They must have consistent messaging regarding the direction they are communicating and that it is linked to the organizational vision and strategy. The need to communicate this face to face and influence support, provide specific details of the positive outcomes of the strategy to those who are accountable for driving aspects of the strategy.
4. Identifying and communicating the performance requirements linked to the strategy and confirming this at regular intervals throughout the year keeps everyone focused on the strategy and tasks.
5. Ensure that all managers make the strategy reviews and updates a key part of their regular team meetings.
6. Implementation is the most difficult aspect to manage successfully of any project because this is when it becomes real – most resistance will be at this phase of the project, so it is important to have engagement strategies in place before this phase.
7. Identify those members of the leadership team most likely to be committed to achieving the outcomes and design a specific role for them to influence their peers and their management teams.
8. Where project management falls down is at the middle management level unless they have been engaged from the beginning and this means actually involved in the project and being able to influence the direction. This is where significant undermining occurs of project implementation and that is largely based in fear. Find out what the fear is and then address it and ensure that middle management are engaged from the beginning so they feel less threatened by the unknown.

Senior management provide direction for the strategy, ensure that appropriate resources both people and financial are available, are focussed and directly involved and aware of all the issues and risks of the project and most importantly provide updates and direction on an ongoing basis. The role of the change manager is to support this by ensuring that all the other issues that could derail the project are dealt with so that the senior leadership do not back track on the strategy.

Finally to maintain commitment to change all projects need to be integrated into the longer term strategy and vision of the organisation and all employees from frontline to senior leadership to understand how the project and their role contributes to the overall vision. Change is only successful when it is seamlessly integrated into the way the organisation operates, not as an appendage to the organisation. And once leaders experience the benefits of getting change management involved at the beginning of a project versus at the implementation phase, next time the challenge of getting change management on the project management agenda wont be an issue.

The reason most leaders wont drive change communication initiatives is because they are about information that is readily available online and because when employees ask questions about the changes they feel unable to provide answers – therefore they avoid doing it.

I wanted to provide an example of a change communication initiative I designed where the business was seriously underperforming and how we designed a change communication strategy that was driven by leaders at all levels of the organisation and had the impact of significantly improving business outcomes.

This organisation is retail based, but this approach can be adapted for any industry sector. I initially worked with the executive teams at each level of the business to focus on business issues and develop change communication strategies to impact on those issues and bottom line outcomes.  The profit results of each of the company owned stores were not good – they were losing money and managers were not equipped to make decisions about what to do to turn the situation around.

Here are a series of steps that I followed to engage managers and staff to turn the profits of this business around.

1. I convinced them of the need to share profit results with their staff.  So instead of staff coming in each day just to do a job, there was a paradigm shift in thinking about how they contribute to the bottom line outcomes of the business.
2. I gave managers of each store some guidelines of how to communicate this information and what to do next.
3. What to do next was that in their next staff meeting to encourage a conversation of what could be improved in the store, customer service, quality of products and to provide feedback on comments customers were making. This might be about lack of stock, lack of choice, price of goods etc.
4. Then each store was given the opportunity for six weeks to implement just one idea and measure the impact – it had to be the idea that they all thought would have the greatest impact on business results.
5. After six weeks they measured the impact, the store managers then presented these outcomes to the territory managers who had accountability for 12 stores.  Looking at the results the decision was then made to impact the top three ideas that had impact on store results state wide.  These were then discussed with regional managers who when they now visited sites met with staff as well.  They now had something real to talk about that employees were directly involved in.
6. After three months the regional results were in country wide and the top 3 initiatives became the standard process in all stores.
7. A newsletter was produced each month specifically to support this project with photos and stories from employees and managers
8. A reward and recognition program was impolemented specifically for this initiative.

The outcomes were an organisation that had made a significant shift towards a retail culture which was reflected in bottom line outcomes.  Employees identified retail opportunities and also improvements to the business outcomes.  These actions were then implemented nationally.  As a side benefit the retention issues reduced significantly and territory managers and store managers were able to show the impact of local decisions on specific retail sites.

The “business awareness” sessions using actual business data and engaging employees to contribute to improving business outcomes were now driven by managers and became a new standard item at team meetings.  The change communication strategy to communicate business improvement initiatives also created a community of expertise that continually shared new ideas.

So whilst productivity issues, profitability issues, redundancies etc may all prove a challenge to communicate, the only real challenge is to stop focussing just on the information about what is changing and to move the focus to opportunities to  improve the status quo. 

As a communicator you are achieving many desired outcomes, you improve the capability of managers to communicate change because you have put in place a structured process.  You have improved business outcomes because you have focussed on a topic that truly engages all employees; you have removed communication barriers that exist in organisational hierarchies and you have given frontline employees a voice.  This is the change communication approach that adds value to an organisation.  Focus on this and you become a business partner, focus on just communicating information and you become a service provider to the business.  Your challenge is always to become the strategic business partner.

The questions we ask when called in to develop a change communication strategy will always produce different outcomes.  This article explores that difference between high gain questions and the typical questions we ask and the impact they have on developing a change communication strategy.  Imagine a senior executive from a business unit contacts you.  His area is embarking on the implementation of a new IT system and you have been asked to prepare the communication strategy.

There are two ways you can go with this.  The first is to as the typical internal communication questions.

When is the new system being launched?

Who are the impacted audiences?

What are the significant changes?

Where can employees find training support?

Who are the specific stakeholders and how will each be impacted?

What specific online communication vehicles does your business unit use to communicate with specific stakeholders?

And then you come back with a plan that outlines what will be communicated when, to whom and how. This approach will always facilitate a master – servant relationship, you get called in to produce information on what is changing and provide a service.

High gain questions on the other hand produce a very different change communication approach and can directly impact the business strategy. So here are the types of questions you would ask.

Why are you introducing this system? Now the answer could be because the current system will no longer be supported.  That is not the reason.  What you want to know is why this system, what will be different, will it provide the organisation with any new types of data?  How will they use that data?  Why is it important?  Who else will use that data?  Do they understand how to use the data?

Another way to get information about the reason behind the why is to probe the changing environment in which the organisation operates.  A good way to do this is to ask what data did you need five years ago, what data do you need today, what data will you need in 5 years time and why.  What will have changed? How can staff prepare for that change? What can they do now that is different to the way they do their work so that they can prepare for the way forward?

This provides you now with the framework to design a change communication strategy that will directly help the business get traction with strategy. So you would design a process that requires managers to communicate and have a specific conversation and drive actions locally. They would then be required to measure outcomes and report those activities and outcomes centrally. You would be focused on what employees could do and what process you could put in place to ensure that behaviour changes and drives the strategic outcomes the business is seeking.  Bottomline is that when change communication is focused on action oriented techniques it is always measured against what the business targets are.

Then around this you would build information that specifically addresses improvements, achievements, team successes, measures, impact on the business.  And you would have a role for managers at all levels to drive the outcomes and discuss at their meetings.  This could be leading process improvements, innovation, identifying new markets, products, ways to improve the customer experience. They will be seeking to identify the improvements and processes that will drive business outcomes and traction with strategy.

Change communication is about energising the organisation to be innovative and at all levels to become engaged.  This is so much more powerful that information about system implementation. And yes of course you need the information about the what, when, when and how of the system implementation.

Always ask high gain questions of your clients and you will see the paradigm shift in how they value internal communication.  You want a partner relationship versus a master servant relationship that is service oriented. Focusing on high gain questions and designing a change communication strategy instead of an information strategy about change will ensure you get a seat at the table and will make your work so much more rewarding.

Change management is such a widely thrown around term these days.  Everyone is a change manager, HR, Organisational development, Employee Communication, Operations Managers, Project Managers, IT managers…the list goes on.  None of these roles in my view  are change managers, what they do has an impact on changing something, whether it is roles, capabilities, productivity etc, but essentially the core skill is what their title implies.

We all know that projects have “change managers” on them to help design and implement the changes that the project is focussed on.  However the most significant contribution change managers can make to an organisation in my view is enterprise wide change.  This is where there is a significant difference from change on projects as the focus is on helping the organisation manage the implementation of strategy across the organisation.

Essentially you are the conductor of the orchestra ensuring that there are no wrong notes played during the performance.  It is about change governance and essentially risk management for the entire organisation.

So what does an enterprise change manager do?  Here are a few of the key responsibilities:

1. Provide an overview of dependencies between key projects, if one project is delayed what is the impact on another project and therefore risk. 
2. A change management heat map, how many key projects are on at any one time, can you identify the key stakeholders that will be impacted for each, when will they be impacted, is it all at once or transitioned over a number of months, is the change process manageable?
3. Key high level risks and issues from an enterprise wide perspective, what are they, who is managing them, what are the mitigation strategies?
4. Enterprise wide communication to all stakeholders, are you helping them connect the dots or hoping they will figure it out for themselves.  If the organisation has no idea why it is doing what it is doing it is difficult for stakeholders, whether employees, customers and suppliers to understand what direction the company is headed and how it is all coming together.
5. Integrate change with business as usual.  At the enterprise level it is not about a series of projects with names that have start and end dates it is just about business, if the organisation doesn’t innovate it will go out of business so it is about keeping the focus on leading and managing the business with an overview of business activity at the enterprise level.
6. And most important of all…make change happen.  You need to be able to advise how to get traction with strategy, there are so many variables that can stop momentum, the most common is resilience by leaders to keep on with the change process when there is noise coming from all corners about why it can’t happen or the risks associate with it. 

We all know of projects that have been going for years with no real progress, I am constantly amazed at the efforts that some people go to, especially at leadership levels to make sure that nothing changes.  And that’s because the engagement process has been poor from the outset, there is fear of the unknown, they feel it is being imposed rather than engaging their experience and knowledge and it is “safe” staying with the status quo.  Helping organisations get traction with strategy means that you see behaviours before they have an impact on change and advise on action to be taken help move innovation forward. Enterprise change is at its core about change governance and making it happen.

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