Now that we've got some ideas around what needs to get communicated when, let's determine who really needs to own change related communication. Organizations have habits around this, just like some of the habits we've talked about earlier. But here it comes to an organizational hierarchy, if you will, number of different layers in your organization, project teams or change teams on the side. And the communication habits fall around three essential plastic patterns. One would be the pattern of the myth, frankly, that information will cascade from the top to the bottom, the illusion that all of the executives are on the same page at the same time telling the directors all of the information with the same level of conviction at the same time, then the directors turned to the senior manager and you know for a fact that this is an illusion, it never works. The rumor mill beats information to the employees long before the executive even make an announcement.

So this doesn't necessarily work. And organizations have learned this. So some executives will insource that change communication challenge to the Communication Department. Now that might be one person, it might be a whole department, whoever it is, depends on the size of your organization. But these are people that have their fingers on a couple buttons. And one of the buttons is the ability to send everybody a message at the same time.

Broadcast messages could be email could be voicemail could be linked to a website could be a talking head, video, whatever it might be. Now, there's this illusion that communication is done, because we've sent that we've checked the box. But it hasn't been truly effective in any way, shape, or form. And often what happens it actually undermines communication because we have employees getting information at the same time as their managers. Now let's assume for a moment and I'm an employee down here and you are my manager, and I came in one morning And I, for some reason beat you when in the morning, and I open my inbox and I see some information and I see one particular email it came across the subject line looked intriguing, I opened it up, I read the first paragraph and I go, Whoa, this is big. And I print it off.

And I hear you come in. So you're in the office, you barely got your coat off, you certainly don't have enough coffee in your system yet to deal with one of your, shall we say challenging employees, or problem children, if you will. But nonetheless, here I am, in your face waving this email that I've just printed, and I say, what do you think what's going on here? And of course, I can imagine that in your head. You're saying, Why doesn't this person get out of my office? But nonetheless, you're far more polite than that?

And you'll be honest and say, I don't know. I haven't seen it yet. Let me get back to you. Now that happens, that conversation happens all the time. And in That 32nd exchange two things have happened in the employees eye. One is, I may be second guessing what I think is important about this email and just ignore it.

Or I might be questioning the value of my manager, I thought you were supposed to know and why don't you know, none of that is helpful. So broadcast information has a very short, small bandwidth of effectiveness. And then there's all hands meetings. And here we've got either a group or the whole organization, functional groups with an executive on all the levels underneath all coming together at the same time. These can be effective if they're done well, if two conditions exist. One is its big, major information that's important that everyone here at the same time, from the same source, and secondly, that the executive that is holding this all hands meeting enjoys and is good at engaging with a whole group of people from a variety of different levels in the organization.

That's not the case. For all executives, even if both of those conditions are true, we're still setting up this confusion between the employee and the manager. So if you and I were again, in this meeting, and now the meeting is over, and we're walking back to our part of the organization, and I'm saying, well, whoa, what was all that about? And of course, you're being honest and saying, I don't know I'm hearing it for the first time. We have a problem. And the challenge is that in most organizations, all of this stuff is happening all the time.

And we wonder why communication is complicated. So when we think about structure and who needs to own communication, we've got to understand that using this particular structure, while the project teams are doing their work, they're in communication with all levels of the organization. Once decisions are made, and then announcements need to be formally made. We need to ensure that it is the executives getting All of the leaders, the directors, the managers and the supervisors, together with input from the change and project teams to talk about what's going on, because what we're trying to do is to set up the supervisors for success so that the supervisors can answer the questions that they get from the staff when they get. So when we think about then, who needs to own change communication, we talk about the communication Trinity, the executives, the project teams, and the supervisors, local area managers.

The executives have the power and authority. The project teams are the project experts the detailed information, and the supervisors have the ongoing enduring access to all employees at the local work area. So when we connect these groups together, when I think about who owns change communication, these are the three groups executives, supervisors and project teams. So, what can you do to help ensure that the communication Trinity in your organization owns change communication? Find this action plan and make a note to yourself