Transcript
[00:00:05.820] - Imogen
Hello and welcome to Dear Comms, the coffee break podcast where we tackle your biggest corporate comms challenges. I'm Imogen,
[00:00:11.500] - Amanda
...and I'm Amanda. We're here to give you practical, no-nonsense advice so you can focus on the things that will really drive influence, engagement, and impact.
[00:00:24.260] - Imogen
So welcome to, uh, the second episode in our series about leading change. Today we're going to talk about preparation, alignment, and getting your leaders ready for change.
[00:00:35.160] - Amanda
Yep, you heard that right, getting your leaders ready. 'Cause honestly, this is where a lot of change programs start going wrong, before they've even begun. Leaders get very excited about the future state, the strategy, the moment of the announcement, but quite often we rush past the groundwork. And if you're not aligned on the basics, why this is happening, what this means, what happens next. But everybody tries to end up filling the blanks themselves, and that's usually when confusion starts spreading faster than the actual proper message.
[00:01:10.760] - Imogen
And I know we've always said that you don't need to know everything before communicating, and that is still true. But when it comes to change, you really do need to know at least the very basics. You hear horror stories about it, you know, that merger announced on the Monday, and then by Tuesday, half the The organization thinks they're going to be sacked. And then on Wednesday, 3 of the top leaders all resign. And the reason for that chaos is because they hadn't figured out the fundamentals. They hadn't figured out what the change meant. And so, they hadn't told the most important story. They were so excited about strategic opportunities that they've forgotten to do the boring unsexy but very, very needed prep work.
[00:01:59.660] - Amanda
Yeah, it's all about the implications and the likely impact, and you need to start, you know, by understanding those first. If you can't answer the obvious questions, then your trust is going to drop very quickly, and as you say, chaos follows. So I think we need to look at what happens before you press go on the announcement. And we have to start with the leadership. There has to be alignment.
[00:02:28.180] - Imogen
And alignment's not just agreement of, yes, let's make this change. It's alignment about what the change is gonna mean. And that's not just for the business, but it's actually for the people as well, 'cause everyone needs to be telling the same story. You know, why is this happening? What does it mean for our teams? Will there be redundancies? Because you know that's the first question that anyone's gonna ask.
[00:02:51.920] - Amanda
Absolutely. And I think the other thing it's important to recognize is what will stay the same? You know, one thing that we forget is that people desperately look for stability during change. And of course, there's always that, what's in it for the employees? What are the opportunities? What are the benefits? Sometimes just hearing your role isn't changing, or this team matters to the business going forward, gives something solid for people to hold on to when everything else feels uncertain. And, you know, the story needs to be clear, and it needs to be understandable.
[00:03:35.080] - Imogen
Yeah, it goes back to what we were saying in the last episode about change being loss. If you can mitigate that loss with things that are remaining or staying the same, that's That's going to help the process. And it's really important, and it's so tempting, not for me, not for you, not for anyone listening, but for our leaders, it's so tempting to wrap it up in consultant speak, that kind of embracing an agile mindset bullshit that they all come out with. Stop doing that and make sure that you are being clear on the specific and very real reasons for the change?
[00:04:16.300] - Amanda
I think when things are difficult, we revert to that formal speech.
[00:04:21.340] - Imogen
Speak for yourself. Speak for yourself.
[00:04:24.180] - Amanda
I think people do naturally. And you're right, stop it. You know, you need to be human. And everybody needs to be able to tell that same story. In a way, you know, their own way for sure, but it's got to have guardrails, it's got to have that same parameters. I think people can cope with difficult news surprisingly well. What they struggle with is inconsistency. There's nothing worse than your CFO telling a different story to the CEO, because that's just going to lead to confusion and cynicism. And once the cynics get hold of it, every message gets harder to land. So you've got to spend time pressure testing the story together as a team before anything goes live. Yeah.
[00:05:19.630] - Imogen
And once you have that case for change, which is basically what we're asking the leadership to develop, is a case for change, you need to understand the impact of that change. And that's not just about, as I said, not just about change and impact on the business, but strategically, what does the change mean for who in the business, and how is that change going to impact them?
[00:05:46.180] - Amanda
You know, this is not about being paranoid. This is different parts of the business experience change very differently. Your manufacturing team, very different experience to head office. Sure. Senior team. Who might see opportunity where the frontline might be thinking about disruption.
[00:06:05.750] - Imogen
And because different parts of your business are going to be impacted or think about this change in different ways, they need different messages and at different times, and they also need to be supported differently. So, if you think about, you know, I don't know, a merger announcement, your sales team might go straight to think about opportunities, great, new customers, wonderful. But your ops team might be thinking about the chaos of integration, or your finance team is thinking about headcount and cost, and HR is thinking, oh God, we've got cultures clashing, et cetera.
[00:06:45.230] - Amanda
You really need to think this through. Every team needs to hear what it means for them. I guess it's a good old-fashioned stakeholder mapping exercise. Yeah. You're not ticking the box here, but a way of thinking through, where is the energy likely to come from? You know, who's already supportive, who's nervous, who has an influence over others, who's likely to slow things down, could be intentionally or unintentionally, quite frankly, who can champion it, who needs to be convinced early. If you don't think about those dynamics early on, you're gonna end up having to react to them under pressure later.
[00:07:30.730] - Imogen
Yeah, I think I'd probably add in, you know, what do those different stakeholders really care about? What are they worried about? Because your board may care about cost savings and job continuity. In fact, I'm pretty sure that that's the reason for any change. But your frontline is going to care about job security and role clarity. And then your middle managers are going to be sitting there wondering how they're going to lead through this maelstrom of hell that's been unleashed on them. And so, everyone is going to need a different approach. And by mapping them out in detail and really getting to the core of them, you'll work out what story you need to tell each of those elements within your employee base, and then what the cascade might look like.
[00:08:21.920] - Amanda
Yeah, I think it's a really good idea at this point to put your pessimist hat on and do a risk analysis. Because every change program has blockers. There'll be fear somewhere. You know, there'll be capability gaps elsewhere. There's probably going to be a workload pressure somewhere. And the mistake is pretending those things won't exist instead of planning for them upfront.
[00:08:50.720] - Imogen
Yeah. It's more than just saying, okay, there are gonna people gonna be scared, there's gonna be a lack of skills. I think dig down a little bit more as well. So if there is fear, what is that fear of specifically? You know, if there is a lack of skills, which skills are we lacking? If it's budget problems, like how much budget are we talking about? If there are trust issues, where is the trust lacking? 'Cause I think if you don't know who you're fighting, you're never gonna win. And it's that kind of old know your enemy adage, isn't it? It's understand exactly what those blockers are because then you can start to communicate through them.
[00:09:31.620] - Amanda
And I think we say this all the time, don't make assumptions because you are inevitably going to be trying to solve the wrong thing. Right. You know, people think resistance means people don't understand it. No, honestly, sometimes they understand it perfectly well, they just don't trust it yet, or don't feel equipped for it. You know, sometimes they think that the leadership hasn't thought it through properly. Different blockers need different responses, but if you've taken the time to think them through, then you're going to have a mitigation plan.
[00:10:08.290] - Imogen
Yeah, so basically what we're saying is that before change can happen, We need to do some thinking first, and we need to have those hard conversations in the leadership team because they really need to be clear on what success looks like.
[00:10:24.070] - Amanda
Yeah. And if you're fortunate enough to be in the room and around the table, you're playing devil's advocate. And this stuff feels slow and unexciting, but it is the thing that's going to make the biggest difference later. Trying to push them to articulate what's changing, what's staying the same, getting consensus around the story, only then are you really ready to go.
[00:10:52.650] - Imogen
Yeah, and I think if you skip this prep stage, we're gonna just dive straight into months of firefighting and reassuring instead of leading, because you'll lose people's trust. Unlikely to stick. And that's all for a week's worth of prep work, a week's worth of sitting down with your leaders. So I think questions to ask your leaders right now, because I'm pretty sure most people listening will have some form of a change program going on. So questions to ask, are we aligned on why this change is happening? What's changing? What's staying the same? What impact will it have on our teams, on our employees? And what does success look like?
[00:11:35.010] - Amanda
If every leader is giving you a different answer, that's usually a warning sign that you're not ready to go yet.
[00:11:42.920] - Imogen
And if you're not ready to go yet, but you've already gone, then it's maybe an opportunity for you to try and sit them down and recalibrate a little bit, and then try and claw back some of that trust that you may have lost.
[00:11:55.700] - Amanda
Yes, don't be fearful of making that pause.
[00:11:59.620] - Imogen
Yep.
[00:12:00.110] - Amanda
Well, next week, we're going to move on to the educate and inform stage of a change communications campaign. So how you actually communicate and course correct once the foundations are in place. What channels help, where leaders often get it wrong, and how communication needs to shift depending on where people are emotionally.
[00:12:25.190] - Imogen
And if you would like any support in navigating change or putting in place that plan so that it all goes swimmingly, then get in touch with us and let us know. Uh, but until then, we'll see you next time.
[00:12:36.910] - Amanda
Yeah, bye for now.
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