When Managing Change, No News is Not Good News
By Nina Kern
The Roman historian Tacitus reportedly suggested that rulers often preferred silence to bad tidings. The actual expression “no news is good news” is often attributed to 17th century King James I of England.
Talking about change can be hard for a leader. Why? Because people prefer certainty and expect their leader to have all the answers! Problem is, during times of change, certainty and clear-cut answers are often in short supply.
In today’s hyper-connected world, though, relying on the notion that “no news is good news” is not only not useful but can potentially lead to unintended, if not harmful, outcomes.
What holds leaders back from talking about change?
Knowing a change is needed but not knowing what exactly
Having a clear vision but an unclear path
Knowing only the initial steps of the change
Knowing the steps but being unable to share sensitive details
Sometimes, middle and front-line managers don’t fully understand (or agree with) the change and so they end up saying nothing. This creates an information vacuum and serves to, often unintentionally, undermine the way forward for all concerned. Inevitably, in the absence of information, people will fill the vacuum with their own narrative. The proverbial “water cooler” is alive and well (even virtually), and once out, the stories that disperse into the organizational ether are hard to retrieve or correct.
Bottom line: once leaders relinquish control of the narrative it is difficult, if not impossible, to get it back.
People don’t like surprises. And if as a change leader you want to “engage your stakeholders” in the change process (a change management 101 best practice), the last thing you want to do is not talk about what needs to or is going to change. You don’t want someone who isn’t authorized to do so getting ahead of you and shaping your change message their way. For leaders, this means sharing information and taking control of the messaging early and often.
Talking about what you don’t know is as important as talking about what you do know. Leaders do not need to be omniscient, but they do need to be forthcoming. And they need to prepare and practice. No, you don’t want to rachet up anxiety, but anxiety incubates and expands fastest in an information vacuum.
Best Practices for Communicating Change
Here is guidance on how to effectively communicate change:
Share what you know – and don’t know. When people have questions you can’t yet answer, it’s okay to say:
“I don’t know…”
“We don’t have an answer yet …”
“That is something we are working through …”
“I’m not at liberty to share that with you right now.”
Preview what you want and need to say with colleagues. Get feedback from some members of your front-line staff: How does what you want to say resonate with them? Is it credible? How can you avoid “sugar coating” but still show empathy?
Prepare others on your leadership team, mid-level managers, and front-line supervisors. Work toward unifying what you are saying and how you’re saying it by bringing them into the process so that you are all on the same page.
Hold a Town Hall or All Hands meeting? Send an email? Post an FAQ? Definitely yes: all are good! But one of these–or even one of each–isn’t enough. Why? Because communicating is always about frequency and reach.
Frequency refers to the need to repeat the information and messages: once is never enough!
Reach involves disseminating your information and messaging to multiple stakeholders within the organization through multiple communication channels. Make sure what needs to be shared cascades down through middle managers and frontline leaders, who should be equipped to reinforce these messages so that their team members can hear and integrate them into their daily work routines.
Messaging about what is changing–and what isn’t–can and should be threaded into everyday discourse at all levels in your organization. The more that leaders at all levels integrate messaging about the change into everyday interactions like staff meetings, performance conversations, and action planning sessions, the more that staff can begin to absorb and acclimate to what is happening.
How to Talk About Change
How can a leader communicate about change in their organization? By leveraging the following tools:
Daily Updates: Send a weekly morning update about what has changed since last week, what’s on tap for this week, and what you expect will occur next week. Include a “why” wherever you can. Then, be sure to speak to other matters and events that aren’t related to “the change” to help people “balance” what is changing with what isn’t.
Amplify Messages: Ask your Division or Branch Chiefs to “pick up” your message the next day and amplify it “down and in” by adding their own reflections, plus news of the day and/or priorities for the week relative to their direct reports. Doing this lets people know the leaders of their organization are in sync, that their immediate supervisor knows what’s going on and is in the loop, and that there is transparency about what is changing and how it affects teams at all levels in the organization.
Practice Communication:
Add an agenda item in your regularly occurring leadership stand-ups about what the message of the week or the month needs to be and how the leadership team should communicate that message.
Agree on 2-3 top-line messages for the leadership team to iterate in a unified manner. That doesn’t mean everyone must say the exact same words in exactly the same way but rather that everyone will use their own style and personality to convey in essence the same information and the same message.
Establish a SharePoint site where staff can access updated change-related information, and make sure it is current and easy to navigate.
Be Available: Make yourself available for impromptu conversations in the office (or virtual) lunchroom to connect with people in your organization, especially during times of change. Conversation is probably the most powerful communication technology there is! Use Teams chats, invite other leaders to join you, schedule regularly occurring Office Hours. There is no better way to build credibility than to be available to talk with–and listen to–staff at all levels when the way forward appears ambiguous and uncertain. Apart from the information you share, the message you convey will let people know you care about them and that they matter.
Bringing the Outside In
Even when things aren’t changing, it is up to leaders in an organization to bring the outside in–that is, to let their teams know what is happening in the organization’s ecosystem. What factors affect the climate in which they are operating? What changes are occurring? What threats or opportunities should they prepare for? What “weak signals” cannot be ignored? Leaders who are able to connect what is happening outside with what needs to be happening inside their organization understand that during times of change—no news is not good news.