An organization often has to make changes that affect its people. Large organizations have processes and departments to handle the communication around changes. Medium sized organizations also have processes and a few people at least to craft and distribute the communication about the change.
How do you get the message out when you are in a small company without a lot of process and you may not even have people managing the employee experience?
In today’s organizations change can be communicated through a message, company wide chat, email and other technology. And, although effective at communicating the content, it feels like the human essence of the communication is lost sometimes. You can’t see, or experience the other person - sometimes that could be a good thing. Other times it could feel disconnected.
Is it old fashioned to have a conversation?
How do your people react to a change through technology? How do you feel about making a communication about a change in that way? See any issue with it?
Some of us don’t see any issue with it. I’d love to hear what you think! I’d love to understand it because that change, a big change, delivered in person is tough for the person communicating the change and for the person receiving the message. Change that affects me, at the end of an email or other message technology, totally unmoderated by a person, often feels unduly harsh.
And yet we have examples of this daily it seems. And people are left in a position where trust has been eroded, questions remain unanswered, various feelings arise, values are undoubtedly trampled, value is diminished.
You don’t want this to happen in your environment! And, you especially don’t want it to happen if you are passionate about what you are doing and need the people around you to help you execute and service that passion!
Maybe I have a bias as a lot of my work is done face-to-face even if it is moderated by technology.
My hope for you is that, If you have a big change to implement, that you share what you need to share with your people. Explain the change and explain the impact on them, face-to-face ( in a town hall meeting, or at least over video conference if you’re on the other side of the world).
Ask them to come along with you and help you - yes, you have to open up and it could be a little uncomfortable. Share with them how it ends (at least this round) and show them how that, too, is a good place for them.