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munication that accompanies any good
change management programme; however, at
least communication does appear as one component
necessary for a change programme to
succeed in most cases.
For instance, in Kotter’s often cited (1995)
approach to successful organizational transformations
(‘Leading change: why transformation
efforts fail’), communication is listed as
the fourth of his eight steps:
1 establishing a sense of urgency;
2 forming a powerful guiding coalition;
3 creating a vision;
4 communicating the vision;
5 empowering others to act on the vision;
6 planning for and creating short-term wins;
7 consolidating improvements and producing
still more change;
8 institutionalizing the new approaches.
Another frequently cited approach to change
management is the ten commandments of
executing change found in Kanter, Stein and
Jick’s The Challenge of Organisational Change
(1992):
1 analyse the organization and its need for
change;
2 create a shared vision and common direction;
3 separate from the past;
4 create a sense of urgency;
5 support a strong leader role;
6 line up political sponsorship;
7 craft an implementation plan;
8 develop enabling structures;
9 communicate, involve people, be honest;
10 reinforce and institutionalize change.
In both of these examples, although the
word ‘communicate’ appears in only one
step, the role of communication is explicit in
most of the other steps. For instance, how
could a manager create a ‘sense of urgency’
without communicating messages that inspire
the necessity to act How can managers create
coalitions, without convincing people
(through words) to follow them How can
managers institutionalize new approaches,
without instructing people in expected
actions And, of course, we could go on, but
these few examples demonstrate how communication
is interwoven in all aspects of a
change programme. Obviously, without effective
employee communication, change is
impossible and change management fails.
In ‘Leading change: why transformation
efforts fail’, Kotter lists ‘under-communication’
as one of the major reasons change
efforts do not succeed. As he says, ‘Transformation
is impossible unless hundreds or
thousands of people are willing to help, often
to the point of making short-term sacrifices.
Employees will not make sacrifices, even if
they are unhappy with the status quo, unless
they believe that useful change is possible.
Without credible communication, and a lot of
it, the hearts and minds of the troops are
never captured’ (Kotter, 1995). Therefore,
companies need to apply the same analytical
energy and rigour to employee communication
and the design of their change communication
plan that they give to the financial and
operational components of any change programme.
The strategic positioning of
employee communication
Employee communication must play a strategic
role in an organization to work effectively.
That strategic role means that communication
must be integrated into the company’s
strategy and recognized for its strategic
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors