On April 11, I will be sharing some thoughts on Communicating Organizational Change at IABC’s Strategic Corporate Communications Leadership Summit at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The conference runs April 10–11, 2014.
It is commonly said that organizations are “over managed and under led.” This seems to be particularly true when it comes to organizational change. Every change effort is treated the same as part of an organization’s change methodology, at least for those that have one.
But change management is not the same as change leadership. What we think of as change management is good for systems deployments or routine upgrades in processes, policies, or procedures. That is, in those cases, where there is relatively little emotion, complexity, or nuance, and processes for making the change are relatively standardized.
Change leadership is required in those situations in which there is a lot of emotion, complexity, or nuance. These include mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, changes in business models, downsizings, etc. In those situations, you need more leadership and less routine approaches to communicating change: Leaders need to be visible, engage in dialogue, and provide context for the change.
A takeaway for communicators is to “right-size” your communication plan to the change. Simply put, big changes require more communications and leadership and small ones less.
