Jennifer Frahm Collaborations

Flickr photo credit: Inner-Chan 

Oh the trials of incompatible communication styles. The weeping and wailing, the gnashing of teeth.

I’ve had a few managers talk to me in recent days about frustrations they are having in introducing new ideas and programs in their businesses. When questioned further as to what is going on, they are using very collaborative attempts to include team members in discussions about preferred futures.

Their attempts at inclusive conversations are being met with scorn and overt attempts to undermine them. The prevailing attitude is “if you are asking me, you must not understand what you are doing, and not worthy of your title“.

These conversations have taken me back to the final chapters of my doctoral thesis. My research looked at how different communication models impacted on how employees felt and thought about change.  One of the findings was it didn’t matter what communication model you used, if there was not a fit between the employees’ communicative expectations and the communicators competences, effective change communication was unlikely.

So if your employees are expecting a manager to tell them what to do, and be autocratic, and you come in with an inclusive and dialogue driven approach to change, you can communicate all you like, but it won’t be effective.

That’s not to say that you can’t build the competencies of the employees to include the ability to have constructive conversations, but it doesn’t happen by osmosis. Well not in a hurry.

And of course the reverse is true, if you come into an organisation that possesses strong dialogic competencies, and you take a monologic approach to your change communication (top down, information focused), you will be just as ineffective.

Ultimately the responsibility lies with you, if you are the one wanting to initiate the change. It’s not them, it’s you.

I guess cultural anthropologists would argue that it dates back to primal tribalism - the need to identify if the newcomer is ‘one of us’ or a threat. If you are not communicating the way the tribe does, you are a threat.  But would the champions of diversity argue? How do we foster the requisite respect for diversity in thought, communication style and behaviour that is said the be required for continuous change?

As change agents we are used to the importance of perceived compatibility in the change efforts - “the new system is just like the one you are using, but with x/y/z added”. But are we putting as much attention on the importance of compatible communication efforts with the very people we are wishing to introduce the change to. Just a thought…

Note: for an overview of the theoretical concepts of the research see “Developing communicative competencies for a learning organization“, published in the Journal of Management Development (2006)

Hmm, maybe so. About five years ago I gave a presentation at an academic seminar on part of my research on communication during organisational change. A fellow academic from the Marketing Department, came up to me, complimented me on the work and then said - “but you know, change communication is just internal marketing”. I smiled, nodded politely, and walked away rolling my eyeballs.

You see, in previous lives I had worked in marketing. I started off in radio and television, worked in small advertising agencies, and then worked in roles marketing professional services and then veterinary pharmaceuticals. Didn’t have any formal qualifications in it, but I *knew* marketing in the real world. Not this academic mumbo jumbo.  There was no way you could tell me that the wonderfully complex world of communication during change that I had studiously slaved over for  24/7 for four years could be reduced to an internal marketing campaign. Humph.

Ah, the umbrage of ignorance. You see, in the last year or so, I have re- immersed in marketing comms through the thought leadership provided by those I follow on Twitter (eg James Duthie’s Online Marketing Banter, Gavin Heaton’s Servant of Chaos,  Anne Sorensen’s Marketingisus Trevor Young’s PR Warrior. And that deeper immersion has taught me great marketing is as wonderfully complex as great change communications. Perhaps the offence I took at the statement, was a reflection of my lack of knowledge of great marketing.

Here’s what I’m thinking now in terms of the similarities between great change communication and marketing. Both:

• Address an act of consumption (product, service, message, new organisational practice)
• Start with a comprehensive stakeholder analysis (who is the purchaser, user, audience we are addressing)
• Are concerned with identifying influencers and engaging their participation
• Use multiple media/ channels to introduce the new (product, service, message, organisational practice)
• Respond immediately to feedback that indicates difficulty accepting the new product/process/service/practice
• Engage the consumers / employees on a continuous basis to provide feedback back to the organisation on product / service/ process/ structure redesign
• Treat the consumers / employees as partners in the future of the organisation and focus on the relationship development and maintenance
• Understand that focusing on control is a quick path to cynicism about the message content
• Can go ridiculously pear shaped regardless of the composition of the team delivering the campaign/ programme and the preparation that has been done!
• Understand that small conversations is the key to successful adoption of the new idea/ product/practice

And on that last point, some of you may not yet have seen the model that ParkYoung put forward last week.

I’ve challenged them on bottom up communication being in the final Conversation model, (I think it should be symmetrical communication for a real conversation). It maps pretty nicely to change communication approaches too…where would your organisation fit?

Truthfully, I feel a bit of a dill writing this. It’s probably a no brainer for many of you. I’ve always prided myself on my interdisciplinary thinking, yet clearly have gotten very siloed with experience. Must look at that. I’m starting by re-reading Everett Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation. I used it a lot in my change management research, but some-how missed it has been used just as widely by marketing studies. So, my question to you is “what discipline are you shunning or dismissing, that could provide some insight to a challenge your are facing within your work as a change communicator?”