Communicate change
When you have the infrastructure aligned, then you have to take
your message of change to the employees.
“The single biggest thing we can do to synergize the culture is be
deliberate about setting up communication points so people can
get more aligned,” Burkett says.
First, make time for your people.
“Immediately make sure that you get on the schedule and get in
front of people’s minds,” he says.
Burkett scheduled forums with his people to communicate his
message, which he says has to be simple.
“With complex products, you could build a message that’s complex and bold, but when trying to translate that to 1,200 people,
you have to really appreciate and recognize that the message has
to be something everyone can grasp onto,” Burkett says. “Keep
things tremendously simple and don’t wrap them with buzzwords.”
Sometimes, you need to check yourself to make sure you’re,
in fact, keeping it simple.
“Part of that translation and the test I would run is, do I think I
could go to any individual and they could play back for me the
message I delivered to them?” he says. “If there is a concern that
there are too many words or depth, then I haven’t kept it simple
enough.”
Burkett also applies another test to gauge whether his message
is simple enough.
“The second test is, can people immediately translate that to
an experience or reference point in their work?” Burkett says.
“Simplistic is about something that can be internalized.”
Internalization allows people to buy in to the changes you are
communicating.
“You want to at least give people an opportunity to say, ‘What
am I going to do differently tomorrow?’ or, ‘Would I do anything differently tomorrow?’” he says. “‘If I were in the same
set of circumstances in negotiating a contract with a customer
that I was in yesterday, did I get anything out of this message
that would guide me to do something different or to validate
that I did it the way the company would want it to be done?’”
If your message doesn’t allow people to internalize, then it’s
not effective and they won’t buy in, so the change won’t be successful.
“If you can’t leave people with enough definition around what
does a one-company that operates on a track record of proven performance mean to individual decision-making when you’re out in
the field, then there’s probably too much at a philosophical level as
opposed to an executable level,” Burkett says.
“You have to have both. Certainly, you’ve got to talk about the
philosophical principle around why is this important to us, and
that’s got to be half the message, but then the other half has to be,
‘This is how we put that into practice. This is how we’re going to
make decisions and present ourselves to clients and treat each
other internally.’”
Be mindful that people process messages differently, so be
patient instead of forceful.
“If you don’t respect the fact that people are intelligent and people have their own internalization process and have to work
through the process, then you might get there by will of force, but
you may do more damage than is necessary, and you certainly
won’t create as much momentum,” Burkett says.
Lastly, it’s not enough to communicate your message and call it a
day. After initially communicating changes, Burkett then scheduled follow-up forums.
“After people have heard this, they go back to their lives, and
they go home for the weekend, and they’re on their drive home,
and they start internalizing and thinking about it,” he says.
“Questions come up, and clarification is needed, and different
points of view are created.
“If you don’t have those follow-up communication infrastructures, then you miss the opportunity to have that reinforcement,
that clarification, that exploration. … It’s critical.”