One of the great things about working at STAR Collaborative is that we get to hang out with a lot of cool, smart people. We’re delighted that our good friend Eric Hayward (one of those cool, smart people) is kicking off our new guest blog feature with his thoughts on communication and company transformation.
When you were a kid, the ways of adults were mysterious. When things happened, when adults made decisions, you were the last to know. Mom and Dad sat you down in the living room to explain you were moving, or the dog died, or you were about to become a big brother or sister to somebody. You started to get the feeling most of what happened in life was not only beyond your control, but beyond your comprehension. The big things happen off in some mysterious dimension.
Employees at companies undergoing big changes can feel the same. You get a management email announcing initiatives, layoffs, mergers. Most of us assume it’s either bad or irrelevant news. We don’t feel like the impact of whatever just happened on us was considered. Even if it was. If things are expected of us as part of this big change, management wonders why we aren’t doing it. Everything was supposed to just slide into place. (“Everything” meaning us people; complicated and unpredictable little worlds unto ourselves).
Can everyone be happy? Or at least not unnecessarily sad and disgruntled? Maybe organizations can reconsider two things, the culture and the style framing up their communication efforts. You might create an environment where employees won’t just go-along-with, but become allies in, whatever it is you’re trying to do.
On culture. Communication isn’t just talking or telling, and it’s not an end in itself. (Great. We’ve communicated. Now we can move on.) Communication is the product of a participatory relationship between leaders and followers. You don’t have to invite employee opinion on every single management decision. You can enable employees to deal with the implications of what rolls downhill in their own way. They may end up not just accepting, but actually carrying out the work of your bigger change at a micro level. You’ve created an environment where employee opinion about big decisions isn’t just put in a box followed up by a form Thank you note. You’re sharing ideas about how to work together getting stuff done now that something big has happened. Employees will give you great ideas.
The style or tone of management communication is famously cold, bureaucratic, and patronizing; it’s obvious from the first sentence that HR or legal has had their hands in what you’re reading. If you’ve set up a participatory culture, employees might read that first memo with a little more open-mindedness, or at least not feel surprised. (My first day at Best Buy, where I worked in Communication, I was told that things change a lot and it’s part of the culture, a culture I quickly bought into.) But you’ll follow up that memo, which you have to write, with more personal, detailed, and genuine explanations about what’s going on. One of the best ways to do this is not via email, or letters. Not even by video or one of those Town Hall meetings, which often feel disingenuous. Face-to-face is best, and since the CEO can’t visit with every employee, companies can invite managers to play a bigger role in carrying the message to their direct reports. Encourage them to be advocates for their direct reports, versus heavies, and let them tell their people in their own way.
Ultimately, people just like to be listened to, and heard. And they don’t love being surprised by bad news. You can set up the expectation that things will change, you’ll make decisions, but you’ll try to make them in everyone’s best interest. If you solicit and respond genuinely to general needs and desires of employees, through their managers, and commit to respect those needs in considering the application and impact of your big decisions, people won’t necessarily love to hear everything you have to announce. But they might hear you out.
Eric Hayward works on communication, branding, and design projects as a writer and strategist. Past experience includes employee health communication for clients of Watson Wyatt Worldwide and change and organizational communication at Best Buy; he currently serves as creative accounts director for Grossman Design Associates serving retail, technology, professional services, and non-profit clients on branding projects. Eric speaks, facilitates workshops, and is an active blogger on topics including branding, health and HR communication, and social media. Eric can be reached at eric@grossmandesign.com. You can read his blog at http://mostlyang.wordpress.com.
