Tell Them It's Hard
After many years as a change management consultant, I recently had a lightbulb moment that will forever alter how I approach communicating with my clients. CHANGE IS HARD! Often, we focus on the positive benefits that a transformation will bring, the pain points it will solve, and we paint a picture of Nirvana to gain awareness and excitement for what is to come. While building anticipation for the future state is a cornerstone of change management, we may overlook the reality that change of any kind is never easy.
I came to this realization as I was on a road tour to multiple locations for a client to introduce an upcoming system implementation. We were fully prepared and pulled out all the stops: Our project branding that we emblazed on our PowerPoint decks, email signatures, even our water bottles. We built engaging presentations to articulate the transformation, benefit by benefit, all tied back to a clear “what’s in it for me” messages tailored for impacted roles. Yet despite our best efforts, the mood was… low. Questions about job loss and organizational impacts, the transition plan that will interrupt work while the company switched to the new ERP, and the fear of the unknown overshadowed the great messages we tried to share.
That’s when the lightbulb turned on for me, we had to acknowledge that it was going to be hard, we had to show empathy and recognize the individual concerns that people had before they could hear all the good promised by the project, as well as admit that in some instances things may not be changing for the better; that the process and controls in place will make things more difficult than they are today.
We decided to do a complete 180° and held dedicated sessions with each office to address the elephants in the room like job changes, org structure and the lack of trust that had begun to develop. It was amazing to me the way that this change in approach opened associate’s feelings, emotions, and made them more receptive. We were now publicly saying what they had been feeling all along, addressing it head on, and creating a new environment for us to safely talk about these sensitive topics. Not only were some of these sessions the best interactions and engagement we had during the transformation, but it created a sense of trust between our OCM team and the associates directly. It demonstrated that we understood them, could relate, and were looking out for their best interests. This improved our credibility, got people to listen and open up, and ultimately engage at levels previously unseen.
So, to fellow transformation or change practitioners out there, my message is simple – tell them it’s hard!
JOSH WOOD, CONSULTANT
As a Consultant at Change 4 Growth, Josh has over 15 years of experience in organizational development, organizational change management, business transformation, and operational excellence. He has supported management consulting engagements within both the commercial and public sectors, and across many different industries. Josh has led client projects in the areas of Organizational Change Management (OCM) and Business Transformation, Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Integration, Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Lean Six Sigma (LSS), Enterprise Architecture (EA), Performance Management, Organizational Assessment (Baldridge Award), Operating Model/Organizational Redesign, Strategic Planning/Communications, and Training Development/Delivery.