Once you have selected your communication channels for a particular part of your plan, for example a survey followed by a presentation of results with video and print material, this wheel helps you think through the presentation elements, the skills you will need to design and deliver the event, and who will be responsible for each element.
The bull’s-eye is the strategic planning for the event. The three rings then outline stages one, two, and three of the planning. Each segment is colour coded to depict who will be accountable for which element.
Figure 6.6 is not colour coded although you can see a colour code key.
Slides/visuals production
Video production
Survey data processing
Workshop facilitation and analysis Print design
and production Writing
skills/
journalism
Design Scripting
Design and production
Workshop material production Creative idea
generation Creative
writing
Draft/
brief Decide content
Draft/
brief
Content and question
design
Content design Design
concept creation
Strategy planning diagnosis
HR consulting
and services Client
External expertise required
Comms dept expertise required Key
Figure 6.6 Bull’s-eye for strategic planning
Self-check
Designing and developing a robust communications plan and deliver- ing it effectively takes skill and commitment. Ask yourself these questions to assess whether you have done the groundwork well enough to be confident in your planning.
Have you specified your objectives? You need to know why, what, how, when, where, and to whom you are communicating at the high level; that is, as part of your communications strategy, and for each communication that you deliver. Without clear communication
The Communications Plan
111 objectives you risk putting out mixed or inconsistent messages, or using inappropriate channels.
Have you created a demand for communication? People need to be interested and involved in your project (either positively or negatively).
Unless they have this curiosity, they will not pay attention to what you are putting out. Compare the enthusiasm of people who are football fans and the way they follow the communication about their teams with people who are not football fans. How would you encourage someone who is very uninterested in the fortunes of a specific team to receive and pay attention to communications about that team? Your task is of this nature.
Are you thinking about communication all the time and not wait- ing for ‘the right time’? You should manage communication at every stage of your project. You must skilfully integrate this activity into the day-to-day project work from inception to completion. There is no single ‘right time’ for keeping communication channels active and open, as these must be open all the time. There are ‘right times’
for communicating about specific events, or outcomes.
Is communication on the management agenda? You must ensure that all managers have effective communication at the front of their mind. It is not enough to have the topic as an agenda item at sched- uled management meetings. Effective communication is something managers should weave into the fabric of their way of managing.
Unfortunately, it often takes a lower priority in their thinking than operational issues. This is not good and in an OD project could be disastrous. In a change management situation, consistent communi- cation is one of the keys to successful implementation. Do not allow your managers to duck their responsibility for this.
Have you defined audience/stakeholder groups? If you are putting out blanket communications without targeting specific stakeholder individuals and groups, you are missing an opportunity. Communica- tion success comes from accurately delivered messages to distinct audiences using appropriate channels.
Are you leading by action and example (the most effective forms of communication)? If your communications state that you want people to behave or do things in a different way then you need to role model this in your own behaviours and actions. What you say and what you do must be congruent or people will notice the discordance
(as any parent will know). Chris Arygris and Donald Schon (1974) wrote brilliantly on the effects of not aligning what you do with what you say if you want to look further into the topic.
Is your communication starting from the top? Harkins (1999) is elo- quent on the ‘distinct voice’ that great leaders develop. His belief is that ‘through tone and message, this voice embodies a leader’s values and goals. It also projects his or her drive and personality. A strong voice of leadership is broadcast consistently and clearly in all com- munication, whether in speeches, memos, e-mails, board meetings, or interactions in the hallway. This voice influences and guides the organ- ization, shaping its values, attitudes, and culture. When a high-impact leader has a strong voice of leadership, it reverberates among his or her peers and followers and throughout the organization.’
Is there real involvement at all levels? People at all levels in your organization need to be receiving and acting on your communications regarding the organization design. If your feedback suggests that involvement is lacking at some levels or within some stakeholder groups then you must do what is necessary to get the involvement.
Passivity or pockets of resistance or both act against your chances of successful implementation.
Have you allowed for the power of informal networks? As Prusak (1997) points out ‘much of the real work of companies happens despite the formal organization. Often what needs attention is the informal organization, the networks of relationships that employees form across functions and divisions to accomplish tasks fast. These informal networks can cut through formal reporting procedures to jump-start stalled initiatives and meet extraordinary deadlines. But informal networks can just as easily sabotage companies’ best laid plans by blocking communication and fomenting opposition to change unless managers know how to identify and direct them.’
Are you using every possible opportunity and channel? (Too much of one thing has limited value.) It is easy to go with the channels of communication with which you are familiar but it is worth exploring channels that are less familiar. Using a new and different channel can be surprisingly powerful and worth an investment of resource on this basis. You may need to seek some outside or expert help if you are not sure of the range of communication options open to you.
References/Useful Reading
Argyris, M. and Schön, D. (1974). Theory in Practice. Increasing Professional Effectiveness.Jossey-Bass.
Harkins, P. J. (1999). Powerful Conversations. McGraw-Hill.
Prusak, L. (1997). Knowledge in Organizations. Butterworth-Heinemann.
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113 Do’s and Don’ts
■ Do start to work on communicating from the very first time you meet to discuss a potential OD project.
■ Do enroll expertise in helping you design and develop your com- munication plan.
■ Do ensure your methods of communicating square with the style and tone of the change you are implementing.
■ Don’t underestimate the power of the informal organization’s communication channels in helping or hindering your messages.
■ Don’t hide things – keep your communications open and transparent.
■ Don’t let the communications lag behind the OD project activities.
Summary – The Bare Bones
■ Communication planning must start with your first meetings about a potential change or OD project.
■ Leaders and managers must match their words and their actions to be credible change leaders.
■ Targeting communications to specific stakeholder groups is critical to success.
■ Using a range of communications channels to disseminate your messages is essential.
■ People at all levels must be involved in the communications process.
■ Feedback on your communications activity must be sought and then acted on.
7
Managing Stakeholders
‘How companies define their stakeholders can make an enormous difference in how they implement their business idea.’
Schwartz, P. and Gibb, B. (1999).When Good Companies Do Bad Things. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Overview
Stakeholders in your project are those people who can influence it for good or bad, who have an interest in it in some way, and whom it affects.
They can be people internal to your part of the organization, part of the wider organization, or external to the organization (e.g. customers and suppliers.) The way you design and implement your OD project is shaped in some part (often a large part) by stakeholder needs and responses.
It is essential that you begin thinking about the stakeholders as you start to work on your project. You have already learned that you need to target your communications to the needs of the various stakeholder groups but working with stakeholders is more than communicating with them. It is getting them on your side, and then getting them working on your behalf. You may think this is manipulation and you can view it this way. However, it will pay you to view working with stakeholders as crit- ical to the success of your project because it allows them a say in how you can adapt what you are doing to meet their needs. If stakeholders see you involving them, listening to them, and being responsive to what
they are saying then they will start working with you. Working with stakeholders from the start is in the best long-term interests of your project even if it may seem a heavy investment of resource to begin with.
OD projects bring a great deal of disruption to people, usually requiring new ways of working and skills development. A lot of the time, we forget that in order to change organizations we have to enable those individuals within the organizations to change personally. For you to implement your OD project successfully you have to remember to actively support people through their individual responses to the changes. With this in mind, a large part of your management of stakeholders should involve you preparing people for change and helping them view it positively.
People directly impacted by the changes will benefit from your planning and delivering empathetic and ordered activities to support them through the transition.
The following sections guide you through two streams of work: first, managing stakeholders, and second, supporting personal change. This is followed by a discussion of trust and risk taking.
Managing Stakeholders
Your first task is to segment stakeholders. Assigning your stakeholders to a category helps you manage them effectively. This means first understanding their positions and perspectives, and second, developing, implementing, and evaluating plans to maximize their support for your project and minimize their resistance to it. It is important to recognize that each stakeholder category (or individual within the category) will have specific needs or issues that you must address. Different stakeholders can perceive the same changes in quite different ways depending on their:
■ expectations of the organization
■ vested interests
■ previous experience of organization design and change
■ existing pressures of work
■ interests and affiliations
■ particular characteristics and priorities.
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117 You will not be successful in your project if you do not recognize these differences or if you decide to treat stakeholders as one amorphous group.
There are various ways you can classify or categorize stakeholders to help you manage them. The way you choose depends on the type of OD project you are planning and the type of organization you work in.
One method is to think of stakeholders as falling into one of the seven categories:
1. Sponsors: As you have learned in Chapter 3 these are the people who approve the overall OD project and who act as champions for it within the organization.
2. Advocates: These strong supporters of the project lend their weight and influence to what you are planning to achieve.
3. Impacted: These people are indirectly affected by the OD project.
Taking a retail example, customers may notice that you have changed your tilling layout but it does not fundamentally change the way they pay for their goods.
4. Targets: The people whom the project and process directly affect fall into this category. Continuing with the retail example, sales assistants may have to be re-trained to work with the new tilling layout. It has a direct impact on the way they do their jobs.
5. Change agents: This group of people includes those you have appointed to be instrumental in introducing the changes that are a part of your OD project as well as those who informally take on the role by virtue of their natural inclination or attributes.
6. Blockers: Unfortunately, a small minority of people will be bent on systematically attacking your project. These people are unlikely to change whatever you do. A good rule of thumb here is to work energet- ically to remove them from any sphere of influence and then spend time with those who are working in your favour. Betting on goodwill is more likely to succeed in the long term than betting on changing a blocker’s mind.
7. Casual: Stakeholders who fall into this category are those who have a passing interest in what is going on but who are neither directly nor indirectly affected. Nevertheless, you must not neglect their level of influence. Observers and commentators often fall into this group and they can exert more power than you might think taking their role at face value.
A second method of classification is to identify stakeholders as falling broadly into three categories:
1. key individual players
2. key groups within the organization 3. key external players and influencers.
You can sub-categorize these groups:
Key individual players
Change sponsor: the director, senior manager or person who initiates and drives the change and who, in most cases, is willing to take overall accountability for the success of the change programme.
Promoter: the person(s) promoting a particular kind of solution to address given problems.
OD project manager: the person responsible for the performance out- comes from the OD project.
Change agents: staff assigned to specific roles to facilitate change and support line management in the process, based on their enthusiasm for the changes the OD project brings and their available skills.
Targets: users of the changed design, including those who expected to benefit from it in other business areas.
Champions: natural supporters or enthusiasts in the business who can become opinion leaders in generating support for the proposed changes coming out of the OD project.
Support players: those whose functional support is required for effective implementation of the project but who do not have direct accountability for it or a strong stake in it.
Key groups
These comprise mainstream employees whom the proposed change will directly impact and whose jobs and performance standards will be
changed as a direct result of the change process. In most organizations, these include:
Senior management: This group is usually the board or an executive body, which is responsible for organizational performance. Members make key decisions. Their sustained and mutual commitment will be required to endorse the changes required and to maintain energy within the OD project.
Change owners: This is the management group which is ‘buying’
the change. It will have an operational impact on their business area – generating most performance improvement. You need to understand fully their needs, expectations, and preferred ways of doing things as you implement your OD project.
Line management: This is the intermediate management group between top management and employees. Ensure their wholehearted support for the project as it is critical to your success in the short, medium, and long term.
Employee representatives: This group represents the interests of the non-managers in your organization. It may be through Works Councils or through Trade Unions. Whichever representative body you have in your organization, you must involve it as a partner in your OD project.
How far you involve it depends on the nature of your business and the interests of the representative body.
At a minimum, members of this group act as a useful focal point to give information about the task ahead, and help you avoid pitfalls. (This can be done either formally or informally or both.) Ideally, you should include members of your employee representative group as part of your project team.
Specialists: This includes those groups who may be responsible for policy, design, planning, technical specification or functional control of various aspects of the change, for example information technology (IT), finance, recruitment, training and development.
Support: This category of staff includes those who support the key operational groups, for example secretarial staff or facilities management.
They often wield power in their role of gatekeepers for other stakeholder groups.
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The two classification methods mentioned above work in most projects, but there are other types of categorization possible. For example, it may be preferable to identify key internal groups according to their business division, level of management, skill areas, location, or roles in the OD project.
Key external stakeholders
What constitutes an external stakeholder will vary according to the size and scope of the OD project. For some organizations, planning major organization design change without involving suppliers as stakeholders is inconceivable. For others, a broader view of the likely impact on third party groups is sufficient. If you work with outsourcing agencies or in a partnership or alliance with another organization, consider what role they play as stakeholders in your project. Such organizations could be either internal or external stakeholders. Which category you put them in depends on the nature of the changes your OD project brings about. However, the following comprise the usual list of key external stakeholders:
■ Customers
■ Owners
■ Shareholders
■ Suppliers
■ Strategic partners
■ Contractors
■ Consultants and advisors
■ Competitors
■ Government agencies
■ Local community.
Once you have categorized your stakeholders gather information about them in order to do an informed analysis. You can gather the informa- tion in various ways including desk research, workshops, interviews, and surveys.
One-to-one interviews are most effective with senior management and external stakeholder representatives. Workshops are often the best way to gather information on key internal stakeholder groups with a large number of people.
You will find that with major OD projects, the concerns, interests, and objectives of different stakeholder groups are frequently in conflict.
Different levels of detail may be necessary for different kinds of stake- holder analysis, depending on the characteristics of the organization, the information readily available and the nature of the proposed changes.
For example, an organization with hundreds of suppliers may require only a high-level review of them as a group, whereas one with a strong depend- ency on a number of key suppliers may need to treat them differently.
You must update the stakeholder information and classification peri- odically during the course of your project. This is because stakeholder positions usually change over time as the implications of a project become clearer. In addition, other stakeholders can emerge as the pro- ject proceeds.
For each stakeholder group decide what is going to be the best tech- nique and approach to use to increase their level of commitment to your OD project and its outcomes. Commonly used techniques include:
■ Running change readiness workshops: These are held before the OD project is up and running, to help identify the extent of your organization’s capability for and willingness to change.
■ Revising performance measures: This is a sensible way of ensuring that you align key performance indicators to what the OD project is trying to achieve. This technique is based on the principle that ‘what gets measured gets done’. If you think through what people need to get done and implement measures of this effectively you can elicit the desired behaviours for the new environment.
■ Develop change agents: This technique is one of identifying stake- holder groups and individuals who can play a key role in driving through change with their consistent commitment to and enthusiasm for the change. If you slowly build these up group by group to a critical mass, change agents can help others in the organization understand and accept the change.
■ Adopt a stakeholder: Using this technique requires you to have each member of your organization design team ‘adopt’ an important stakeholder. The adopter then takes on the responsibility of commu- nicating with ‘their’ stakeholder regularly about the project. This pro- vides valuable feedback and warning of when stakeholders might be feeling particularly uncomfortable about the change.
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