The three components of successful business change

I’ve supported several large-scale business change projects over the years and the key thing I’ve learned is that successful change communication isn’t just about communication.

There are three key components to a successful change project:

• Project management
• Change management
• Communication management

If you’ve been asked to do the third one – the comms - its always going to be a struggle if the other two aren’t in place or aren’t working as they should.

This is why at PR Academy we worked with the PRCA to establish the Change Management and Communication Diploma.

The course equips you with an understanding of all three and while you might not want to be a project or change manager, knowing how they should work and what questions to ask is crucial to delivering effective change communication.

For example:

Project management need-to-know

The way the business change project is run will influence the approach to communication. For example, is it a linear plan sometimes known as “waterfall”? Or is it being run along agile lines which is much more interative with the shape or the final product or service not being known at the start?

What are the risks and issues? Are there any dependencies? How are changes to scope dealt with?

Understanding how projects work help you to ask the right questions and give good advice to the project manager.

Change management need-to-know

Has anyone done a change impact assessment?

This is important for two reasons:

• You can work out how much effort is needed to make the change a success
• You can design the change management and change communications strategies accordingly

In the Change Manager’s Handbook, a key text for our PRCA Diploma in Change Management and Communication (and available to everyone studying), Caroline Perkins explains the importance of understanding the impact of a change:

“Identifying and analysing the impact of change is one of the keys to effective change management planning and helps to avoid, or at least minimize, the disruptive effects and support the positive aspects of the change.”

Change communication myths busted

One of the perpetual challenges of doing communication for a living is that everyone thinks they can do it! Sometimes I think this applies ever more on change projects!

These are some of the myths of change communication that I think need busting:

Tell them ‘what’s in it for me’. No! Talk about ‘what it means for me’. Don’t try to sell the change. There may not be anything in it for some stakeholders (if there is, happy days, but more often than not there isn’t.)

Everyone hates change. Could it be that what employees resist is badly delivered change?  Things aren’t explained clearly and nobody listens to their feedback. Listening is an important part of good change communication.

Culture change. Although I’ve talked her about business change – a new IT system, different eays of working etc - culture change is something that communicators are often asked to support.  There is an excellent quote from Bill Quirke in his book Making the Connections (also available to those studying) : “….those yearning for it often cannot define in what ways they want to see things changed. If culture can be defined as ‘the way we do things around here’, culture change is changing the way we do things. This begs the questions, which things need to be changed, in what ways and why? Asking these questions is vital to turning ‘culture change’ from rhetoric to specific and observable outcomes.”

We’ve got to keep on communicating! No! It’s OK not to communicate – it really is. It is tempting to fill any quiet time with communication for the sake of communication. In this scenario employees simply stop engaging with the content because it isn’t telling them anything useful. Instead, signpost. Let people know why something isn’t known and tell them when the decision will be made. Explain that between now and then they may not hear any updates.