Change: 5 tips to improve communication and accelerate execution

Communication is key to execute a change project. Believing that your team will implement change without fully understanding the objectives or the reasons for the change will lead to failure.

Here are 5 tips for communicating effectively and giving your change project the best chance of success.

• Build a story about what you believe, and what inspired the change decision. Tell everyone exactly how you came to the idea of the change. Start with the situation that doesn’t work anymore and move to the situation you believe will work. Tell them exactly why you know it will improve the business. End your story with the benefits they will experience once the change is complete.

• Don’t use long distance communication. Step up, in front of your workforce, to tell your story. Don’t use impersonal means of communication in the first place, like e-mail, to communicate your project. It will only enforce resistance.

• Use strong visual aids to support your story like pictures and video, if possible. Use blank templates with photos and leave your bullet points at home. Words simply make people read your slides instead of listening to you.

• Don’t overload with data. You want people to understand the “why” of the project and then think about it. They’ll forget your data within a day. Stories make people think much more and they also stick better in memory.

• If the execution stalls, spend more time on communication again. There might be several reasons why execution is coming to a stop. Any change in strategy will require that you communicate again, from the beginning. Don’t assume that people automatically will adapt.

Once the employees see and understand why the company needs the change, there’s less reason for them to return to old habits and consequently delaying the execution.