Addressing change through strategic change management.
Increased competition, rapidly shifting technologies, emerging disruptive business models, and a tight labor market are among the key factors facing practically every company, regardless of its size, industry, location or history. The result of all this is companies in a state of near-constant change.
Change of this nature has the potential to destabilize the workforce, reduce employee morale, create uncertainty in the market, and give your competitors a reason to create doubt among your customers.
Here’s how you get there.
To ensure that change is embraced by employees and understood by customers and other external stakeholders requires a strong communication strategy.
Approach
Our process of developing a strategic plan to communicate about a major change includes a half-day Discovery session between appropriate corporate leadership and members of Mower’s corporate communication practice. This includes:
- Learning everything we can about the change initiative, with an emphasis on the business case for the change and how it impacts customers and employees, and asking the tough questions that will need to be answered.
- Conducting primary research, such as in-depth interviews or focus groups, with additional corporate executives, employees, customers, analysts or other stakeholders to help shape strategy and messaging.
- Reviewing relevant communications that have been prepared and/or shared to date as well as how competitors have communicated about a similar corporate change, if appropriate.
Deliverables
The primary deliverable is a communications plan that lays out the objectives, strategies, tactics and timeline for effectively communicating with each target audience.
- Key messaging is a centerpiece of the plan. These clear, compelling and concise messages will be consistently communicated about a change-driven initiative.
- Perfect timing of communications. In some cases, communications may need to be completed as quickly as possible. Other times, situations may require ongoing, multifaceted communications.
- Compelling content created based on your unique situation.
Results
Once the communication plan is approved, we’ll collaborate with your teams to ensure effective implementation. Services we provide include:
- Media and presentation training for spokespeople
- Developing emails, newsletters and other written components
- Creating PowerPoint presentations, videos, and other multimedia and graphic assets
- Coordinating media interviews if necessary
For ongoing change management communication programs of six months or more, we will recommend:
- Conducting research with employees (and external audiences if appropriate) to gauge how the campaign is working, along with regular feedback and input from corporate leaders, to make any necessary adjustments
