{"id":2978,"date":"2016-06-16T14:05:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T19:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/?p=2978"},"modified":"2025-03-15T14:08:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T19:08:45","slug":"46742-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/46742-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Straight Talk About Communicating Change \u2013 By David Cheatham, Transform Communications, Llc"},"content":{"rendered":"

Straight Talk About Communicating Change
\n<\/strong>First in a 3-part series<\/p>\n

Change has no conscience. Change doesn\u2019t play favorites.<\/p>\n

The rate of change is such that we can\u2019t wait to communicate decisions. We must act decisively to meet business needs, and that starts by communicating change.<\/p>\n

Change is a necessary part of your business. Considering that your business delivers most of its value from new products, new applications and new features, change is your business.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s marketplace is characterized by velocity, uncertainty, change and ambiguity. As a manager of people you must energize your team to embrace change.<\/p>\n

\"\"Change is emotional, not logical<\/strong>
\nWhy is it that organizational changes that you, as a leader, see as financially necessary are often viewed negatively by your employees? For instance, you make a sound business case for a change and your people focus on the personal (and usually negative) aspects.<\/p>\n

Change is inherently emotional. Managers may see change as a logical progression of bringing in new products and services to stay competitive. And those same managers believe employees will think the same way. But employees look at change emotionally. Their reaction: \u2018Never mind the numbers. How will change affect me?\u2019<\/p>\n

Employees\u2019 initial reaction to change will be negative. And that\u2019s natural. The best way to get employees to see the positive side of change is to involve them in the change. Participation brings buy-in.<\/p>\n

All major changes \u2013 even positive ones\u2014encounter resistance. People aren\u2019t necessarily resisting change as much as they are resisting disruptions the change causes.<\/p>\n

When explaining change, balance the financial and organizational emphasis with the human side. Always ask the question, \u2018What\u2019s in it for me?\u2019\"\"<\/p>\n

Reasons why managers don\u2019t communicate<\/strong>
\n\u2013 I don\u2019t have time to communicate
\n\u2013 Employees don\u2019t understand reasons for the change
\n\u2013 Being honest is too risky
\n\u2013 Information is power, and I\u2019m not giving it away<\/p>\n

Managers rationalize why they shouldn\u2019t communicate openly and quickly. But these communications myths can prevent you from high performance.<\/p>\n

Some managers believe that being honest with employees is too risky\u2014that information they share in a meeting today will be on Twitter before they arrive home that night. Some managers believe that employees can\u2019t handle negative news because employees don\u2019t have the ability to balance the pluses and minuses and arrive at a reasonable conclusion. Other managers are afraid that employees will feed negative news to the competition.<\/p>\n

\"\"But today\u2019s employees are knowledge and sophisticated. They have a personal stake in the company\u2019s welfare. Treating information as \u2018confidential\u2019 may keep your competitors in the dark, but your people will stay in the dark, too. Difficult news will end up in the media (traditional and social) eventually, regardless of the restrictions you place on it.<\/p>\n

For managers who believe that giving away information weakens their control, consider that sharing information is reciprocal. Put information to work for you. Knowledge achieves maximum effectiveness when it is shared with people who use it every day. The more widely you \u2018give away\u2019 knowledge, the more effective and trusted you will be as a manager.<\/p>\n

Remember that choosing not to communicate is a way of communicating. What message are you sending your employees?<\/p>\n

Next month: How to increase employee acceptance of change<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"David Cheatham<\/a>\u00a0is the founder of\u00a0Transform Communications, LLC<\/a>, a communications consultancy specializing in aligning employees and implementing change across the enterprise. The company\u2019s tagline sums up David\u2019s approach to the workplace: Inform, Engage, Inspire. \u00ae David also teaches in the School of Business at Rutgers University. Contact: David@Transform-Communications.com<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 David Cheatham<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Straight Talk About Communicating Change First in a 3-part series Change has no conscience. Change doesn\u2019t play favorites. The rate of change is such that we can\u2019t wait to communicate decisions. We must act decisively to meet business needs, and that starts by communicating change. Change is a necessary part of your business. Considering that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emersongroupinc.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}