Paul Raath | Change Management Consultant | Bizmod | mail me |
Change Management is often overlooked as a discipline that helps to ensure organisational change gains traction and is adopted by the employees it impacts. One of the simplest tools available to organisations is communication, however it is often underutilised or incorrectly implemented.
Behavioural change is vital to the success of projects. Only by effecting behavioural change can organisations ensure that a project is a success. However, communication is only as good as the message behind it – the message needs to be conveyed correctly to the correct audience at the right time.
Employees communicate all the time – emails fly back and forth daily resulting in a noisy landscape with an inundation of information. This is the unfortunate result of falling into the trap of communicating for communication’s sake.
Common mistakes:
- One message does not fit all
Project communication is often focused upward. This becomes an issue when the communication is sent downward as a box ticking exercise, resulting in valuable information not being communicated correctly. You may be communicating the same information to vastly different audiences, so the message needs to be communicated differently for maximum impact.
- We don’t communicate often enough
When in the middle of a project, we often forget to communicate. Generally, we communicate well at the start of a project, but as the project progresses other responsibilities become more important, and this element is often negated. When communication restarts, the original message has been forgotten, leaving the audience confused.
- We communicate too often
On the flip side, we can also over communicate. This usually happens when there is an understanding that we need to keep everyone in the loop; however, it can quickly result in communicating unnecessarily. This amplifies the noise, and the message is at risk of getting lost.
- We don’t understand the audience’s needs
This results in…
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Read the full article by Paul Raath, Change Management Consultant, Bizmod, as well as a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the June/July 2023 edition of BusinessBrief.
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