Effective organisational communication underpins any organisational change management framework. To successfully implement a change programme, we seek to ensure that the business is fully engaged and committed to implementing and embedding the changes of the Project.
As such we develop the communication initiatives and key messages to create a shared understanding of the change, generate business commitment and prepare the stakeholders for the impending change.
Our communication strategies are developed at the start of a project, and implemented in conjunction with our stakeholder engagement approach.
Our communication strategy provides the working philosophy of our change program and outlines the focus and intent of the change communications effort, provides the vision for communication and details how it supports the overall change effort. This cascades into the communication plan and calendar, which are developed in conjunction with the stakeholder engagement plan.
Our communications approach is focussed on ‘communicating with’ people rather than ‘communicating at’ them. This requires a two-way approach and raises the importance of listening to concerns and issues raised and addressing each one with respect.
Our approach is based on the following communication principles:
- All communications need to be created around a single shared vision, with consistency of the messages across different channels
- Avoiding death by 1000 initiatives. Communications from different people targeting the same user group must be clustered and then released in a planned and controlled manner
- Maintaining a communication calendar. Communication events will be mapped into an integrated calendar so we have line of sight of all communications impacting stakeholder groups at any point in time
- Consistency through coordination. Communications relating to any aspect of the Project must be reviewed and signed off by a central coordinator before those communications are issued
- Communicating only with the people who need to know. Don’t distract people by sending communications to people who are not impacted by the change. Furthermore, relevant information that is coordinated must come with the opportunity to ask questions wherever possible
- We walk the talk. In change management projects, actions speak volumes. Our behavior is therefore always consistent with what we have communicated.
