Communicate change. Communication and preparation of communication are key.
You cannot overcommunicate. If anything, we as leaders undercommunicate because it’s so prevalent in our minds that we’re communicating with ourselves all day long, but we forget that we’ve got to be more active in our verbal and written communication with our employees.
You need to be not just consistent with your message but how often you deliver the message. You need to have regular frequent communication.
Buy-in is important. People need to understand why the change, what the change will yield and what their role is. …
As you get larger, you certainly have more challenges than a smaller company when you have a handful of people that you’re communicating with on a regular basis.
I think we’ve (worked on) that internally with our own messaging, whether that’s through our director of employee communications or that’s me and other senior managers presenting at town-hall meetings. Third is through a regular process of establishing communication channels from the senior leaders to extended leaders to then our supervisors and employees. You do that on a regular basis.
We also have a motto at the end of our meetings, no matter what the meeting is, ‘What do we need to communicate and to whom?’ so that we’re making sure we’re clear on a message and we’re clear and consistent. We’re acknowledging who is responsible for getting that message out.
It clearly needs to come from the leader, but not just the leader. The message needs to be really consistent throughout all various levels of the leadership team.
Be patient. Patience is very important and oftentimes challenging. Obviously you do want to get to the end, but what we’ve realized is just as important as reaching the end is going through the process.
While we hurry to rush the change, it’s really the process of the change and going through that transition of change where so much opportunity for growth and improvement for innovation to occur.
In reality, you don’t want to rush through the change for fear of missing some significant opportunity.
It’s a challenge because it’s confusing. People are leaving one spot and going to another, and you don’t have all of your processes well nailed down so there is sort of a cloudy period — a period of transition where people are not fully in the new and not fully out of the old. That’s uncomfortable for a lot of folks, but I think working through that makes for a better end result.
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