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Whenever an organizational embarks on change the major objective is that employees are truly engaged with that change and that they are all facing the one direction, clearly understanding the new vision. However one of the biggest mistakes leaders make is by just telling employees what is going to change they think that they will immediately understand the reasons why and support the new direction - and this is rarely the case. All leaders, whether at team leader level or President of a company must understand the difference between information and truly engaging employees.
Both aspects of communication are important in any change program. This includes providing regular information vehicles such as intranets, CEO emails, newsletter updates and face to face presentations. However these information tools on their own will not change behaviour. All transformational leaders know that you need to create a situation where the employee is actively involved in understanding what the change is and most importantly how it will effect them. It is only then that you will achieve the Aha! factor when they say, "Now I get it".
So how do we use this analogy when we are tying to communicate change? Let's look at this example.
An organization wants to communicate the financial results to employees and the usual approach is to post the employee annual report on the intranet. But this time they need to do something different, they want employees to understand why the company needs to improve and what shareholders base their decisions on. So they decided to run free lunchtime information sessions for their employees on how to invest in the share market and held them for one hour each week for four weeks.
The topics progressed from understanding the share market, categories of companies listed etc till the final week they examined annual reports. So in this final session they were reviewing annual reports and came to the last one for the session and after reading through the data the question was asked of employees, so who would invest in this company, few put their hands up. And you guessed it, the company was their company and with a collective Aha! the employees finally got the message.
The most successful aspect of this approach to change was that other areas of the organization were involved in designing the strategy.
So here is the important message for any change program. Information is important, employees need to know what is happening, when, why, who, what and by whom. However, equally as important when it comes to organizational change, employees need to be involved in the process to be truly engaged. This is where change professionals need to focus on the "Aha moments" and engage employees in the process of change.
Both aspects of communication are important in any change program. This includes providing regular information vehicles such as intranets, CEO emails, newsletter updates and face to face presentations. However these information tools on their own will not change behaviour. All transformational leaders know that you need to create a situation where the employee is actively involved in understanding what the change is and most importantly how it will effect them. It is only then that you will achieve the Aha! factor when they say, "Now I get it".
So how do we use this analogy when we are tying to communicate change? Let's look at this example.
An organization wants to communicate the financial results to employees and the usual approach is to post the employee annual report on the intranet. But this time they need to do something different, they want employees to understand why the company needs to improve and what shareholders base their decisions on. So they decided to run free lunchtime information sessions for their employees on how to invest in the share market and held them for one hour each week for four weeks.
The topics progressed from understanding the share market, categories of companies listed etc till the final week they examined annual reports. So in this final session they were reviewing annual reports and came to the last one for the session and after reading through the data the question was asked of employees, so who would invest in this company, few put their hands up. And you guessed it, the company was their company and with a collective Aha! the employees finally got the message.
The most successful aspect of this approach to change was that other areas of the organization were involved in designing the strategy.
So here is the important message for any change program. Information is important, employees need to know what is happening, when, why, who, what and by whom. However, equally as important when it comes to organizational change, employees need to be involved in the process to be truly engaged. This is where change professionals need to focus on the "Aha moments" and engage employees in the process of change.
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