Here are some reasons organizations fail to get traction with leaders and employees on business strategy and what to do about it.

1.     A divided leadership team

2.     Launch with huge fan fare then no messages on actual updates or achievement

3.     Change fatigue – organizations that appear to constantly change direction

4.     Organization has a poor track record in successfully sustaining change

5.     Waiting too long to implement employee engagement strategies

So let’s tackle each point and identify some things we can do as employee engagement specialists to minimize the impact of these impediments to successfully implementing change.

A divided leadership team

One of the most overlooked aspects of change management is alignment of the leadership team with the new business strategy. One quick tip is to facilitate a session on how the successful implementation of change is largely dependent on a united leadership team.  They need to understand their role in engaging employees in the change process and what employees will be looking for in terms of signs of support and commitment.  This is the key message, whilst the leadership team may not all be in agreement, and it should be noted that they rarely are, they must be aligned.  That is, they will give 100% commitment to the new strategy and what they need to communicate and do to engage their teams. This is important because the first thing employees look for is a divided leadership team to discredit the new strategy.

Launch with huge fan fare then no messages on actual updates or traction

Another important tip is to make sure that as the “expert” on change management you are able to convince the CEO and their executive team of your strategy.  Often they are so excited that they tell you what they want in terms of employee communication and usually this involves major announcements and forums when they have finally reached alignment on the new business strategy.  However the significant risk is that the time between the launch and the actual first visible achievement of some change is too long and employees begin to believe that change will never happen.  Loss of credibility is an enormous risk for the leadership team when implementing change so you need to provide convincing  reasons for your employee engagement approach.  Drawing a timeline indicating the gaps between the launch and expected first actual achievement of a project milestone should be enough to convince any leadership team of the importance of taking a strategic approach to employee engagement.

Change fatigue – organizations that appear to constantly change direction

Leaders and employees become increasingly disengaged when they do not understand why the organization seems to continue to change direction on business strategy without giving the prior change strategy enough time to work.  Often these are not new strategies but enhancements or the next progression of the original business strategy.  When developing your employe engagement strategy you need to establish the links between each business strategy and be able to demonstrate to leaders and employees what these links are.  The best way to do this is to design activities that engage employees in the process of change as it relates to them.  There are many change strategies that you can implement that are focussed on activities that will ensure leaders and employees will finally say, “Aha, now I get it!”

Organization has a poor track record in successfully sustaining change

Employees have a long memory and if the organization has a poor track record of successfully sustaining change they will be quick to justify why they shouldn’t become engaged with this latest change in business strategy.  Therefore part of the engagement strategy needs to include specific data and facts about what is different this time and how the changes being introduced will be sustained;  reverting back to the “old ways” of doing things will not be possible.  Where ever possible real examples that demonstrate the each step of implementation need to be communicated, not only emphasizing why employees can’t revert back to previous processes but also the benefits of the new changes.

Waiting too long to implement employee engagement strategies

Finally waiting too long to engage leaders and employees will also risk traction on business strategy.  At the outset of any discussion of change in business strategy, the employee engagement expert needs to be involved to understand timeframes, key milestones and impact.  It is only then that you can develop meaningful strategies that focus not just on information and key messages about what is happening and when; but also engagement strategies that focus on the individual and how the changes will impact them and the way they do their work.  By implementing employee engagement strategies early on, rather than what most change strategies focus on which is information, employees will feel some ownership and connection to the new business strategy from the beginning.

Whenever an organization embarks on a new business strategy, whether for a division or the whole of organization, and this includes government departments, leaders and employees react in exactly the same way.  There will be those groups that support the new strategy even without all the facts at hand, those that preach the mantra, “it will never happen” and those that wont support the strategy until they see some commitment and evidence that it will happen.  The challenge for change managers is to focus on the leadership team first and develop a strategy to deal with each of these three groups.

I look forward to hearing more about how you have managed to ensure traction with new business strategy.

There are many steps you can take to ensure that management understand the value of your employee communication strategies and why they should be supported.  One of the biggest mistakes communicators make is assuming that senior management should surely know how to communicate face to face with their teams, after all that’s why they are in a management role. Wrong.  Very few managers have formal training in communicating with their employees and running team meetings, maybe somewhere along the way they were taught how to communicate one on one, but to a large team, particularly communicating complex messages about change it is unlikely.  So just handing them a power point presentation or a script is not going to work.  And human nature being what it is, they will avoid delivering the message you have so carefully crafted or just mumble some general information about the team and the business without focussing on the real issue.  When implementing a change communication strategy it is vital that all employees have face to face communication with some level of management.  And this may be team members with team leaders, state managers with divisional heads, executive teams with their Company President or Chief Executive Officer.  Regardless, all levels of management have to be part of the face to face change communication strategy for it to be effective.

Here are a few tips to consider when faced with this dilemma.

1.     How can you make it easier for managers to communicate? Provide a sheet of key messages, meeting outline and allow them to talk to the key points using their own natural style.

2.    Provide support – you can always volunteer someone from the communications team to be present at the meeting or have a communication champion to attend.  Their role is to take notes on any questions that are raised that can’t be answered then and there and to “fill in the gaps” should the manager fail to stay on message.

3.   Make sure that what you are asking them to communicate is clear, concise and not too long.  A 15 minute meeting is much easier to get agreement to than a 1 hour meeting.

4.  Provide each presenter with some tips on how to manage communicating and presenting to large groups – 5 key points – again don’t overwhelm them.

5.  Finally you may wish to brief the management team at their regular meeting about what is required.  It is highly unlikely that they will raise questions at the meeting so follow up with an email or phone call afterwards to ensure that they know what is required.

Most importantly, one of the key reasons management don’t communicate is because they don’t think that they are responsible for the change message, they think the communications team is.  Clarifying the difference between everyone’s role and responsibility in communicating change is essential at the outset so there is clarity about what is involved.  Face to face communication is uncomfortable for many people, just because someone is in a leadership position does not mean that they know what to do, they need coaching, they need simple clear messages, they need support and they need to understand how what they are requested to do fits into part of an overall change strategy.

I’m very keen to hear about the challenges you face with managers blocking the communication process and to share your solutions to this issue so I look forward to your comments.

Marcia

Innovation: The smart companies during this economic downturn are using this time to engage employees in coming up with innovative ideas to set them apart from competitors when times turn good again. The key here it to examine customer satisfaction feedback and determine exactly which attributes customers value the most – for the banking sector it may well be convenience, friendly and helpful employees and ambiance of the branch.  If this is the case then the focus is on how to think outside the square and offer convenience in banking over and above what competitors do, which may not be about hours but might be about location. Similarly with friendly and helpful employees – how well do you staff understand what the customer experience is like, have they tested it as a customer?  And with regard to ambiance, are employees encouraged to become involved in design and facilities and comment on those little things that they have noticed would improve the customer experience?

It goes without saying that if you want to create a service culture you need to engage employees in the design of that culture.  So how can you do this for the least cost but highest impact? One way is to form teams across divisions and levels, communities of interest that come up with innovative suggestions for improvements. Tap into employees’ collective knowledge about the customer experience, what they have noticed, what customers have complained about to them, some of the best research is not the survey that researches customer satisfaction but the comments made to employees during their actual encounters with the organization.  If you take this information, divide it up into segments, pilot, evaluate and implement and then reward employees for their contribution you are well on the way to creating a culture focussed on service and not just focussed on turning up to work and not contributing.

An organizational culture will only change when you set up systemic practices that support the change. So you need to ensure the following is in place for to achieve optimum outcomes:

1.   That managers and team leaders have specific accountabilities in encouraging new ideas from their teams and understand the concept of communities.

2.   That a process is developed for selecting those ideas to improve the customer experience that can be implemented as a pilot.

3.   The evaluation process is determined against business results and that successful ideas ARE implemented.

4.   Employees are rewarded for those innovative ideas that customers truly value - the reward system may not be about money – it might be about dinner with the Executive team – therefore again reinforcing the culture of having access to people who make the final decisions and that innovation in customer service is valued.

5.   Finally the communication strategy needs to focus on the success of the program and continually reinforce the positive impact on the customer experience and business outcomes.

So something to think about, how are your strategies in employee engagement and change management encouraging employees to make a positive impact on the customer experience and create a service culture?

Looking forward to hearing about the strategies you are implementing.

So let’s examine some of the lost cost but highly effective strategies you can implement to energise your workforce and inspire them to do their best at work by looking at a few case studies.

In this instance we are looking at a car manufacturing plant. Whilst this is an old story about energising employees the principles remain the same. The Saturn Motor Company in the USA was after many years coming out of, yes you guessed it budget cuts, a poor economy, sliding car sales. Employees were proud of the company they worked for, but were fatigued and tired of hearing of new visions for the company and strategic reviews. The company decided to hold a three day event for customers and staff and they called it “The Saturn Homecoming.” The rest of the story is incredible, not only for the way it energised employees but also the fact that thousands of customers drove all over America to learn more about how their car was made and because they felt connected. I have attached a link to a brief video overview; the story is one to be seen to be believed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHpSsf9AeJU&feature=related

Another completely different case study is one I worked on focussed on energising a workforce again going through budget cuts and changes in strategic direction. The organisation was moving to new premises from old tired offices, the IT systems were changing completely as was the way employees would be managing the customer experience. And we needed to do this quickly with nine new competitors in one year. We brought the new office design and fit out to employees, in their current work environment so they could touch and feel the difference. Then we developed a simulated team environment, with computer screens trying to explain the different workflows and impact on the customer experience. This is very different from taking people out of their office environment to a room on another floor to show what the new office will look like and how we will work as teams. People need to be able to compare, and most importantly experience the difference.

Now I know some of you will say with regard to the Saturn story that good times don’t last, absolutely, there will be economic booms and busts as there will be changes in CEO’s and the focus of executive teams. But this topic is how to deal with the here and now, how to energise a workforce and connect the journey and the vision of the organisation.

Please let me know your experiences of energising change fatigued employees and what has worked.

If you really want to make a difference and to have a seat at the table when strategy is discussed then you need to move away from talking about the information tools that will be used to communicate and think about how you can contribute to achieving organizational outcomes. So where do you start and what is the difference?

Well first you need to understand business strategy. This is not a difficult thing to do, but once you have mastered this then the questions you ask about employee communication change. Typically they should include the following:
* What aspect of the business strategy could an employee communication plan impact?
* How will the business strategy be measured?
* How can my employee communication strategy be measured and linked to the business measurement?
* Can I devise a low cost yet high impact employee communication strategy that will engage employees?
* How can my employee “information” communication strategy compliment this?
* What will be different for employees and the business if this strategy is successful?

The most important question you really are asking is how can I reposition employee communication in the mind of the CEO and the Executive team so that it always has a place at the table from the beginning and not called in once decisions are made and asked to simply get the message out there. The only way to do that is by demonstrating what you can do. And the easiest way to do this is the following:

* Not everyone is going to be supportive so in the first instance identify a business unit or division with a manager you get on well with who understands and believes in the contribution employee communication can make in achieving business outcomes
* Next once you’ve read up on business strategy and understood the business and customer needs of the division make a time to meet with that manager to discuss the business strategy he or she is working on
* Ask what the business targets are, what will mean success?
* Ask for the opportunity to research how you might assist in developing an employee communication plan that will engage all employees including managers in that division to achieve the business outcomes
* Go away and research many different strategies and come back with a plan including examples of case studies where business outcomes have been measured and achieved through employee engagement

In the consulting world it is a commonly understood belief that you need to “earn the right to advance” you can’t just go in and expect understanding of what you have to offer if you can’t demonstrate it. Similarly you need to have a solid example for the CEO and the Executive team to stop and take notice, and most importantly demonstrate how you contributed to the achievement of business outcomes.

Once you can demonstrate this you have successfully repositioned Employee Communication and have earned that seat at the table.

Look forward to your comments.

Marcia

Firstly the issue should be centered around the customer experience. Generally this will involve a process that the customer must engage in, in order to obtain your product or service. At every step of this process employees are able to make improvements, so it appears a natural choice. The important fact to consider is the external factors that may be impacting on the situation. Therefore you need to ensure that your employee communication strategy will be able to influence a positive outcome and there wont be overriding factors outside your control. The second aspect about measurement is that at the outset you and the client area need to agree on how you will measure the impact of your strategy. If you do this at the beginning it will be easier to control any discrepancies that may occur throughout the project. For instance, a major product fault causes an overload of enquiries via your call centre. So, the time customers need to wait on hold for their call to be answered is not reduced, but instead is significantly increased, the direct opposite results your employee communication strategy was to achieve. So when working with an operations area be clear about the work environment and factors that will impact on the measurement of your strategy.

How Do You Decide Which Business Objective Employee Communication Can Impact

The business objective should be an issue that connects employees and customers and can quickly indicate results. The more complicated the business objectives are, you will require a more detailed plan for all aspects of the project. For instance, a new advertising campaign, an upgrade in technology, and other issues may all impact on the level of success in achieving your employee communication objectives. If there is a clear plan, defining roles and responsibilities, actions and timeframes, this will provide a framework against which the employee communication strategy can be measured. Business objectives and issues will be clear early on.

How To Determine What Is The Realistic Impact And Measurement For Employee Communication

We have examined how to decide on the business objective, here we are looking at measurement. You need to be able to measure results in a tangible way. These may include:
• Reduction in customer complaints
• Improvement in time spent waiting on hold in a call centre
• Increased sales for a particular product or service
• Improvement in customer satisfaction tracking research
• Human resources indicators such as reduced absenteeism, increased productivity

These are some suggestions, there are of course other fields that can be used for measurement. The key is to ensure that the method of measurement is tangible and can be achieved.

So the suggested next steps are:

1. Identify a business issue you think employee communication can impact on.
2. List the employee communication strategies you could implement.
3. List how you think the employee communication impact could be measured in business outcomes.
4. Identify the reasons why you think these measures will be achieved.

By doing the above you will be well on the way to demonstrating to the senior executive team that employee communication is a strategic partner in the business, not a support service.

So here is an example of how NOT to do it. The CEO of this organization decided that a new set of values was essential for the business. His reasoning was based on feedback from the staff survey, poor communication skills of manager’s, a general lack of trust, a perceived lack of focus on the customer, both within the organization and externally.

An external consultant was called in to facilitate a values session with the senior management at an off site retreat. There was plenty of white paper, robust discussion and at the of the day they all agreed on the values and pledged that they would now walk the talk and display the values in their working day. These values were the usual, in this case Customer Focus was central and other themes were honesty in our communication with others, trust in the people we work with, teamwork is how we work, open communication and so on.

So then the employee communication team was called in and were asked to design a communication strategy around this. Posters were produced and framed, the usual graphics had the central value with the others around this, a booklet was printed and distributed to all employees and each manager was given the task of conducting a values workshop with their teams. The way this worked each group picked a value and then worked on what they thought the organization was doing well about this value and what could be improved. Many hours were spent on this and then they reported back to the whole team.

So far so good. And that was it. Nothing else ever happened, no-one ever heard anything else about the values workshops, the CEO ticked it off his list, a job done, employees were engaged because they participated in workshops right? Wrong.

In fact this process caused more headaches than anything else. This organization went on to restructure, downsize and expected employees to work longer hours and do more with less. The senior managers began to panic about their job security so they became more withdrawn rather than open and honest, the focus was on budgets and not the customer and the values became a talking point amongst employees for what they did not stand for.

This is how it could have been improved.

Once the value workshops were over then the information collated from the teams could have been discussed by selected employees and then the ideas for improvement could have been communicated face to face via managers to staff using team briefings. Each team could have been required to monitor the impact of those improvements and to build on those and measure the impact either via sales in the case of the customer, or via the staff survey in the case of employees, here I am talking about topics such as open and honest communication, teamwork and so on.

Engaging employees in the process of change by communicating a new set of organizational values only works if you construct strategy that is directly integrated with the work that they do. And most importantly you need to measure the impact of those activities. It is only by doing this that you bring values to life and real change to an organization.

If your approach to technological change is new skills training and employee communication strategies that include stakeholder management (translated briefings), intranet and email updates that’s not managing change, rather it is focussed on information. So what is the difference and why do we need to do anything more than provide information.

IT systems are not introduced for the sake of a new system itself, they are introduced because there are benefits to be realised from a business management perspective. This may include more information on customer profiles and identifying other products or services they may be interested in purchasing, they may focus on back office systems such as greater information for human resources management or accounting or they may focus on the supply chain and logisitics. Whatever the reason there is a business reason for change and this is what employees need to understand if the full benefits of any system implementation is going to be realised.

Let’s look at an example. This financial services organisation was introducing a new back office system. In the past employees worked in separate divisions so customers were transferred from one area to another to process their request. The new system meant that all of the customer details were now available to employees and that they would now work in teams and “own” the customer from the commencement to end of transaction. It was a complete system and work style change so before specific system training was introduced a simulated work area was established and employees were taken through the customer experience. It was important that they understood the benefits to the customer looking at the changes through the eyes of the customer. This way we created the “Aha” moment, employees got the message better than any intranet, information session or email bulletin could have conveyed it. And when employees went into system training they clearly understood the benefits and business reasons behind the changes.

So as change professionals, can we take the same approach to managing system changes and apply it to every new implementation? The answer is clearly no because as every organisation’s culture is different, so it follows that every approach to change management and employee communication must be different to maximise the investment and potential of the system changes that are implemented.

Look forward to your comments.

Marcia

This was then communicated out to his direct reports who then had to communicate and decide the top 5 issues for their respective divisions and then finally the top 5 issues for their teams.

So the only aspect of a team brief that would change would be the last section which was how what is happening in the company as a whole and our division relates to the work we are doing in our team. This was always different depending on your team in the division.

The CEO would then check when talking to employees on his walk arounds whether they had in fact attended a team briefing and how regularly they occured. Now the reason this worked is two fold. Firstly it was driven by the CEO, he would say to his direct reports, his executive team, I am conducting my team brief with you now so there is no excuse for you not to do the same with your team members. Secondly I made it very easy for them. It was a regular occurence that flowed directly from the weekly CEO executive team meetings. This ensured that there was a system, a process in place. He would have the same sheet of paper in front of him and would jot down the top five issues that he wanted communicated out. The divisional heads then listed the top 5 things and how they related to the CEO briefings and so on. This ensured that the information was the same for everyone in the company, then the division, then finally the team.

So these are the keys here.to making Team Briefings work.
1. Make sure that you put in place a simple process
2. Make sure that the CEO drives it and that his direct reports understand the importance to the CEO – not you. Afterall you are not their boss, he is.
3. Ensure that the topics are the type of content that management are comfortable and knowledgeable about
4. Provide a feedback loop , again this is part of the process, if there is a question that management do not know the answer to, there must be a formal easy process for them to follow to quickly obtain the answer and respond to the employee.
5. Team briefings should only take 15 minutes, they can also be incorporated into regular weekly meetings.

When it comes to cascading information in a face to face format via management remember that as with anything, there will be some topics that employees want to hear directly from the CEO and others they are happy to hear from their manager. This is why is my previous blog I mentioned that in my experience when it comes to significant issues such as retrenchments, closure of offices and merger of the company employees generally want to hear this from the person at the top. Day to day, week by week and month by month operational issues they are comfortable in hearing from their manager who manages their daily work.

Soon we will be releasing an online version of a team briefing tool kit for you to use immediately. More information will be emailed to you in the coming weeks.

As always I look forward to your comments.

Marcia

The reason why this does not work is because the focus is on managing fear, not change. And this is why managers don’t follow through with the key messages and face to face discussions with their teams that you have so cleverly crafted. Yes.. I know that “studies” show that employees trust their immediate manager or supervisor more than anyone in the organization. Therefore it must follow that if you are designing a communication and change strategy focused on organizational restructures and downsizing the smart thing to do would be to utilize them as a key part of your face to face strategy.

Wrong. This is not the way to approach change during these times. Think about it. Here you have an entire organization paralysed with fear. Budget cuts all around, negative media speculation, no one is secure. And the only person who really knows what is being planned is the CEO. Is it any wonder, when you give a script for managers and supervisors to communicate to staff, their teams ask what’s going to happen with our jobs, and the manager or supervisor in the spirit of trust and honesty says, “I don’t know, I don’t even know what is going happen to me.” So this is why you need to take a different approach to face to face communication during these times.

I mentioned in my previous blog the need to focus the organization on growth and innovation strategies and thereby give specific accountabilities to managers and supervisors. During this time, whilst trying to balance negative news as well, your face to face strategy needs to utilise the CEO and not only at town hall forums. Here’s an example of a strategy I implemented during another “bad” economic time, when the organization had 9 new competitors in one year. The CEO met with each of the state managers of the business divisions individually. He explained to them honestly the reality of the situation and why he had to rely on them. He gave them specific requests of what he wanted from them and they in return delivered and stepped up and managed in some instances the total closure of state offices in true leadership style. We then held “Business Reality” workshops for one day in each state which all managers and supervisors attended. The CEO was present at each and shared with them real business data related to their state operations and the issues facing the organization and asked for their input in coming up with options and innovative ideas to grow the business.

The outcome was that despite going through extensive downsizing, restructures and everyone having to reapply for new roles, the business grew by 25% in that year. Obviously the strategy I designed was far more detailed than outlined above, but the purpose of this blog is share why I think managers and supervisors are not the best face to face communicators during times of change.