Let's clarify who really needs to own change related communication. Here's a normal organization Power Authority stack organizations over the years and years, maybe one of them have developed habits around how they've been communicating change. One habit is, unfortunately still practice, but it is the myth or the illusion that we could cascade information down through the ranks. Now, this is an approach that's hopelessly inadequate. And we all know that the executives may not be on the same page, they may not tell the directors at the same time with the same level of detail and conviction. Therefore, the directors are not going to be on the same page with the same level of clarification and commitment to the change.

And of course, as we go down, the information gets more and more convoluted if it gets to the bottom at all. But we know what's gotten to the bottom of course, is the rumor mill so this really does not work. organizations to some degree have learned this. And they've then instigated another habit, which is the Communication Department gets this obligation of communicating change. The Communication Department then uses tools that they have access to, whether it's broadcast emails, or broadcast voicemails, or putting together talking videos or uploading things onto the intranet, whatever it might be, but this is broadcast information. Now, there is an illusion here that because the information has been sent, communication has been done.

Now, there is no guarantee at all a that everyone got it be if it was something that needed to be read, that everyone read it and understood it. But nonetheless, it was done. This broadcast information can be quick, it can be expedient, but it does create an illusion that communication efforts have been fulfilled. Which of course, it hasn't. The real problem here is that broadcast emails undermine the relationship between the employees and the managers. So let's assume for a moment that I'm your employee and I came in in the morning and I opened up my email.

And I looked at an email, the subject line was intriguing. So I read the first paragraph for tonight. Well, this seems important to us. And certainly to me, I want to print it off, I want to talk to my manager about this. Now, I'd beat you in that particular morning. And by the time I get this printed off, I can hear you come in and I'm now in your office.

Now you're barely into work and you've not had nearly enough coffee yet. And certainly, you don't want to deal with your problem child employee, but nonetheless, here I am, with this document in my hand, and I'm waving it under your nose and say, Well, what do you think about this? Not even a good morning, but what do you think about this? Of course, what's your response? Well, probably pretty honest. It's like Well, I don't know, I haven't seen this yet.

Now, that's a very honest, great response, frankly. But the downside here is that you've been put in the situation by the organization to, unfortunately not be able to answer your employees question. And in the employees eyes, that does two things. One, it discounts their assumed importance of the change. And also it tends to undermine the relationship that they have with you. As a manager, why don't you know, you're supposed to know you know, everything that's going on in the organization, at least I hope you do.

Of course, that's a problem. So broadcast communication can help a little bit but barely, just a little bit. The other thing that organizations have been doing for quite a while are all hands meetings, whether it's one executive bringing her particular division together, or if your organization is small enough, maybe you can bring everyone together. Now, these all Hands meetings typically play out. They're relatively short. Let's say they're 30 minutes.

And they're usually attached with PowerPoint slideshow. So the executives up speaking for let's say, you've got 30 minutes. So maybe speaking for 25 minutes, and then asking for questions. That's the last place you want to be asking questions. Because you're going to get questions from people who simply want to hear themselves speak in front of the whole group. You're going to get questions that would be so detailed, that there's no hope that the executive would know the answer, which is what the employee is trying to do in the first place by asking such a miniscule level question is to put the executive on the spot.

These meetings these all hands meetings can be facilitated and designed very well. If you've got 30 minutes for one of these meetings, the executive needs to speak and share the information for no more than five minutes. Break the group into small teams their local work area groups, Have them generate a list of questions in 10 minutes, and then spend the next 15 minutes answering some of those questions. That would be an effective all hands meeting. But the downside is often that doesn't happen after 30 minutes, meetings over. And now I'm your employee, you're my manager.

And now we're walking back to our offices. And I'm looking at you saying, whoa, what was that? I didn't see that coming. What do you think? And of course, you're hearing the information at the same time, as I don't have any more answers. And you probably have even more questions than I do, which again, is not a great situation.

Unfortunately, organizations tend to practice all three of these, and it doesn't work very well. So let's figure out what does work. Here's again, an organizational stack, and the project or change teams while they're doing their work developing the plan. They're in communication to all levels of the organization as they should be. But once decisions are made, and now we're having to communicate, here's what's going on. And here's what people need to do.

We need to shift the focus. The most critical relationship for the project and change teams now are with the supervisors in the executives. And it's critically important that the executives take the lead in bringing the executives, directors, managers and supervisors together along with those project teams, as often as required in order for everyone to get their questions answered. Because what we're trying to do is to set the supervisors up to enhance this vital relationship between them and their staff. And if we don't do that, we have a problem. But over the years, I've worked with many organizations and help them develop this kind of a scenario.

When it comes to communicating change, and they find it works incredibly well. So when it comes to really answering the question who owns change related communication? Who is responsible for change communication? The answer is the communication Trinity. So there's three key groups. Throughout this conversation.

So far, I've been emphasizing the critical importance of supervisors in their role of communicating change, because they do have the ongoing enduring access to their employees that local work area. And so the supervisors, of course, have a critically important role. The executives are the ones who provide the power and authority. They're the ones who can call meetings and people will come. When project teams call meetings, people don't tend to show up but when executives call meetings, people will show up. executives are the ones who have the capacity to hold people accountable for results.

Executives are the ones who need to ensure that the alignment of all of these changes is clear. Lastly, of course, it's project teams. Because as long as the project comes around, they're the ones with the detailed information, the most current information about the changes in your organization, how can you tie these three groups together? Now, I'm not saying here for a moment that the executives really only talk to project teams and only talk to supervisors. We've already talked about this. The executives talk with all of the supervisors in order to have the supervisor set up this relationship.

What we're talking about here is at the end of the day, who needs to take ownership for change related information, and that is your supervisors, your executives and your project teams. When you get those folks owning change related information, now you've got something cooking