Build a case
To define the company’s new direction, Schultz and his leadership team studied the core competencies of Valassis and matched them with growth areas that presented the best possible chance for long-term success.
“We first started to look at businesses that fell within our core competencies,” he says. “After we started to build the product portfolio, we started to look at things we thought were adjacent to our core competencies. For example, we expanded into newspaper delivery bag advertising. That completely tied in with all our competencies because it involved printing on bags and putting samples in bags.”
These new strategies were a departure from what people at the company were used to though. When your company undergoes a shift in culture or philosophy, you will generally be able to divide your employees into three camps: the early adopters, the initial skeptics and those who openly resist.
Schultz says the key to achieving maximum buy-in is to set an example with the most receptive of your employees, display their successes and try to use that to bring along the other two groups.
But it’s not quite that simple. Even with early adopters in place at Valassis, it still took several years for the other two groups to completely buy in.
“We really thought a lot in terms of how to make the transition faster,” Schultz says. “One of the things we learned was about the third of people who are early adopters. Those people tend to be relatively quiet because you’re taking them to a place where nobody has really been before. Therefore, they don’t know what the world is going to be like and they don’t have a lot to say about it. All they know is that it makes sense intellectually for them to buy in, so they’re going to do it.
“Then, the problem you run in to is the two-thirds that aren’t initially buying in are very vocal. They know what the history has been, they know about the success and ask why we should be doing things differently. They’re in the majority.”
The initial struggle to move the company taught Schultz a lesson: Don’t worry about the detractors and skeptics. Concentrate on cultivating a forward-thinking mentality in the employees who have already jumped on board with your plan.
“The mistake we made the first time, the mistake that cost us a lot of time, was we put a tremendous amount of time into trying to pull that two-thirds of our company along. What it does is it really slows down your early adopters. You have to let the early adopters go, you almost have to ignore the detractors, let the early adopters have success and that will pull the others along.”
Building a case for change with employees is a matter of good communication — meaning communication that conveys a message in a straightforward, effective manner.
As the company continued to diversify and the culture continued to evolve, Schultz and his managers sent out a survey that contained two key questions: Do you know what our goals and objectives are? Do you know how you can help us accomplish those goals and objectives?
If your communication strategy is working, the vast majority of your employees should be able to answer those questions. On the Valassis survey, more than 90 percent of employees were able to answer those questions.
Schultz attributes it to a communication strategy that conveyed the central goals and objectives of the company in multiple ways.
“We’ve always believed that you use a variety of different methods to communicate with folks,” he says. “You don’t communicate in just one way because individuals learn in different ways. You will have people who very much like to hear it from the leader. They learn best when they’re looking at the leader and they’re talking to the leader. Other people prefer the written word. You will have people who would rather have it in e-mail form, and others will tell you to leave them a voice mail.
“What you can’t say is, ‘This is how we communicate with our associates.’ You have to say, ‘We’ll communicate with our associates in a variety of different ways.’ That way, you’ll be able to touch everyone.”
