Effective Communication Strategies for Change in Organizations (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Welcome, my name is Isabella Brusati and I'm the founder of Isabella Brusati Consulting. We support clients in leading and managing the people dimension of change. Today I'm going to talk about a question that was asked by Charles in London and he says who has to communicate change in a big initiative? There is not one single rule but generally if we are talking about a big organisation, so for example a multinational, it is extremely likely that the information that is strategic at a strategic level, so for example the first announcement, we are going to merge with our competitors, will be given by the CEO or someone at the board level. So everything that is strategic is given by someone that has got the gravitas and has got the seniority to represent the company. So the CEO is seen as the company, fundamentally by the employees. Other information that are more related to what is going to happen to me, so will I still have a job, why are we doing this, who is going to be my manager, etc, actually is communicated that usually in this big change management initiative is delegated to the line manager. Why? Because it is the person that is having a day-to-day interaction with the single employees within the department. Also it would be unlikely that the managing director or the CEO has got the chance and time to go and speak with every single employee in the company if there are for example 50,000 employees, so of course we have to be reasonable. But it is also a matter of trust, so if it is something that is of strategic level, go with the senior level. If it is someone that is more like on a personal level, so it is a one-to-one interaction that really matters, then go with the line manager. Of course if it is a smaller organisation, it is very likely that the CEO would be much more involved with the day-to-day activities. There will still be work delegated to other line managers, but in this case the distinction is a little bit more blurred, because you still have the CEO that gives the information of strategic level and the line manager that provides, I call it operational, even though it is not a definition that I particularly like because it seems like it is not important whilst actually the one-to-one interaction with the employee in order to deal with resistance is absolutely key. Well, it gets to be delegated to a line manager, but the situation will not be so straightforward because it is also very likely that the employees, for example if it is a company of 10 individuals, will have a much closer interaction with the CEO. So there is not a black and white answer, taking into consideration the dimensions of the company and also the style of communication within your organisation. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next episode.