To tell or not to tell, that is the question. When you are making a major change in your organization, when do you tell them? In advance so they can prepare for it, or at the time of change, so that they don’t ask too many questions? The answer seems obvious, right? Tell them with enough time to prepare for the change.
Getting acceptance of change is akin to someone going through *the five stages of grief. If you don’t let your organization go through the five stages within a reasonable timeline but instead choose to have it go through all five stages in an intense, shortened period, you will reap the whirlwind. To tell or not to tell? Telling early is the better bet.
Not To Tell
Many companies wait until it is too late because they don’t want to raise unwanted questions or concerns or have the user base push back too hard. What’s missing from this approach is the obvious: many of those questions or concerns telegraph the components of the change that have not been addressed. Most feedback is a litmus test on your change program. This doesn’t mean that the fewer questions or concerns, the more accepted the change will be. Everyone is different and not everyone may express their concern in the same way, or at all.
To Tell…and Support
It is important to lay out enough of the change in a way that enables your personnel to digest it and work through the five stages of grief. The converse to the five stages of grief, on a personal, psychological level, are the *five stages of change. The stages correlate to what I call the “Three A’s of Communication”:
- Be Aware of the change – let them know what is coming. It does not have to be in detail; you may still be working out those components. This entails stages 1-2 of change.
- Accept the change – make the change inevitable, through enough repetition of message over a long enough period of time. Remember it takes 7x for someone to hear something for it to stick. If you are making a change announcement in February and not saying anything until the change goes live in August, your message is not being delivered consistently enough. This incorporates stage 3 of change.
- Adopt the change – this only comes with understanding the reason for change, having the change modeled for them consistently, and if it’s a system related change, having them be hands-on enough with the change before it goes live so that they understand the change almost as well as they understand the current system. Yes, that means more training. Yes, that means feedback sessions. Yes, that might mean additional 1-on-1 follow-ups. This includes stages 4-5 of change.
What We’re Trying To Say
The question you are trying to answer is not, “How do I minimize negative feedback from the user base?” The question is, “How do I present this change in the most positive way, with enough communication and time for the user base to process and accept it?”
Pain Points of Not Telling
Remember also that addressing issues is less expensive up front – or as up front as possible – than addressing them further in the development life cycle or after implementation. So, why would you want to let your users go through all five stages of grief in a super-intense, post-go-live period, when addressing their concerns and their upset will be really expensive and may require additional changes that could have been caught and made before implementation? It would be better to communicate with your personnel up front, let them digest the change and provide feedback, so you can implement your change effectively and with higher rates of acceptance and adoption.
In conclusion…in communication, earlier is better than later. You may learn a few things and tweak your change program in ways that makes the change more acceptable to your organization.
To learn more about how we lead change management initiatives, *contact us.