(This article is authored by Carrie Scott, who leads the Fleishman-Hillard European practice group for internal and change communications. She is based in the firm's
Brussels office.)
Did it ever occur to you why branding change to employees doesn't work? Given the speed and agility of today's marketplace, it's no wonder that change is still a hot topic
with management. Whether it's a wide-reaching corporate re-brand, a full-blown business re-engineering initiative, or the introduction of new corporate-wide software, most change
programs commence with much fanfare, a slick logo and a lot of fancy 'tag-line' talk cascading from senior management.
Despite the fact that companies are engaged in perhaps more change initiatives than ever before, many continue to fail because too often they try to package change instead of
communicate it.
Corporate offices are museums for the change programs of the recent past: The slim multi-function clock/calculator pleading to "Find a Better Way" or the Waterford crystal
paperweight inscribed with "Vision 2000: The Path to Growth at Company XYZ." They're on your desk right now, likely collecting dust.
It seems to be human nature that once you identify something new, you have to name it. But that's just it: Change is not new. Good organizations are in a persistent state of
change. If they weren't, we would all still be using typewriters instead of laptops and Amazon would only be known as a river in South America.
Do we need change programs?
Business author Jim Collins says that in the best organizations change programs don't exist. In his latest book, Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce
Resolve, Collins presents his findings from a five-year study on 1,435 companies. His team found just 11 organizations that exceeded the general stock market by at least three
times over 15 years. According to Collins, these 11 organizations averaged returns 6.9 times greater than the market's - more than twice the performance rate of General
Electric under Jack Welch - and did not have a "miracle" change moment.
To be sure, even organizations with a committed-to-excellence framework introduce strategic and operational changes along the way that help adapt their organization to a
changing landscape. Here's where determining how best to introduce change becomes critical: Communications elements over promise and underdeliver.
Take the information technology boom, for example. Companies now manage supply chains, inventories, logistics and data more efficiently. These benefits were not realized
without introducing significant changes to how employees work. Even so, today's supply managers still manage supply. They just do it in a different way. Mergers are a point at
which organizations experience rapid change. More often than not, however, the core business remains the same. When two pharmaceutical companies come together, at the end of the
day, they still make drugs.
Sometimes, the vision remains the same but the strategy shifts. For example, in the 80s many businesses were focused on Japan, but now China is the hot growth area.
These changes, although significant, are not revolutionary. Rarely do companies experience shock-to-the-system types of change. Examples such as deregulation in the utility
sector, which meant ensuring a new employee focus on customer service, are few and far between. Robust transformations, such as Nokia's from forestry to telecommunications,
take decades.
Instead, most companies are actually introducing process changes and strategy revisions. If change programs are usually about evolutionary change (or the changes that represent
smaller steps in the larger framework) then we should place them in this perspective.
Change fatigue, a common term today, is not so much being tired of change but being tired of talking about change. Drop the revolutionary language. Employees just
aren't buying it.
Shouldn't we call it something?
While packaging the change isn't the answer, you need some sort of shorthand for talking about change because it is important to signal that something different is about to
happen. This is especially critical in the beginning, in order to gain awareness. After a merger, for example, it is a bit cumbersome to walk around referring to your efforts as
"those 16 projects about productivity and performance we instigated to clean up our operations post-merger." People need a visible signal that something is happening.
However, people do not change with awareness alone. When companies package change - i.e. using traditional advertising methods, such as taglines, posters, gimmicks - usually
two things happen:
ch-ch-ch-changes
Firstly, a high general awareness of the change is achieved, but awareness rarely leads to shifts in opinion and behavior. Awareness is important when you need to draw
attention quickly to something and it can indeed be attained through coffee mugs, mouse pads, posters, T-shirts and other widgets. Awareness is the first step.
However, when you are trying to get people to do work differently as a result of the change, you have to ensure they understand and accept why change is needed and engage them
in a role to achieve and sustain the change. For example, displaying colorful posters directing employees to "Focus on the Customer" reminds people that something is going on
involving a renewed customer focus, but rarely do employees, after seeing the poster, intuitively begin rearranging their daily priorities to meet this mantra. Just achieving
awareness is not enough, and unfortunately this is where most communications efforts stop.
The second result of packaging change is inadvertently feeding a "this-too-will-pass" mentality. Employees have seen so many of these campaigns come and go that they have
"intiative-itis" ("I used a lot of energy on the last one and look where that got us"). Most have learned that if they just lie low they can get by unscathed. Branding minimizes
the resolve people have toward adopting change because it signifies something new, an appendage to how the company works instead of being woven into the mechanics of how it
functions.
Employees have low tolerance for internal spin and marketing change taps into a well of employee cynicism. One large supermarket called its change program "Genesis." Soon
afterwards, employees began remarking to each other internally, "You know what comes after Genesis? Exodus."
Contact: Carrie Scott, [email protected].