Building a communication plan for an organizational change

The most common communication mistake in organizational change is announcing the decision before the rationale is clear. People hear what is changing before they understand why, and in the absence of a clear explanation, they construct their own. The explanations people construct for themselves are almost always worse than the truth.

The sequence that tends to work ¶

Effective change communication follows a sequence: why before what, what before how, and how before when. The rationale for the change needs to be communicated first and clearly, not buried in the third paragraph of an all-staff email. The specific changes come next, described in plain language without jargon. The implementation details follow, once people have had time to absorb the first two.

This sequence feels slow to leaders who have been living with the decision for weeks and are ready to move. It does not feel slow to the people receiving the news for the first time.

Channels and frequency ¶

Different people process information differently. An all-staff email is necessary but not sufficient. It needs to be followed by team-level conversations where people can ask questions, and by a written record of the questions asked and the answers given, so that the information is accessible to people who were not in the room.

The frequency of communication during a transition should be higher than feels comfortable. A brief weekly update that acknowledges what is still uncertain is more reassuring than a detailed monthly communication that projects false confidence. People can tolerate uncertainty. What they find difficult is the sense that nobody is paying attention to how the transition is going.

What to do when the message is not good news ¶

Some organizational changes involve difficult news: a restructuring that eliminates roles, a program that is being discontinued, a funding cut that requires significant reductions. The temptation is to soften the message to the point where it is no longer clear.

Plain language is kinder than euphemism. 'Three positions will be eliminated' is harder to hear than 'we will be making some adjustments to our staffing structure,' but it is more respectful of the people receiving the news. It also reduces the period of uncertainty, which is the part of a difficult change that people find most difficult to manage.

A communication plan is not a document you write once and file. It is a schedule of conversations, updated as the transition unfolds and the questions change.