People want to know. A few years ago, I led a series of focus groups for a government client related to a major change effort they had undertaken. One of the questions we asked was: Would you prefer to hear about the change once it is about to be implemented and ready to go? Or would you prefer to hear about it from the start and through its planning stages even as various details are being hammered out? In other words, would you prefer “a done deal” to accept and adopt, or would you prefer to be in on the “sausage-making.” Resoundingly, participants reported that they preferred the sausage-making. Warts and all.
Secret vs. sausage-making: The sausage making is, granted, replete with “warts” — the main one being uncertainty. There are stops and starts. Actions may be taken and then changed, reversed, or just abandoned. Money runs out. Leadership changes. Vision runs short. The mission changes. The will to forge ahead depletes. Yes, all of these things happen. Used to be, before we lived in a tightly-woven, fast-moving communication circuit fueled by social media and technology, you could keep most of these “warts” a secret. Now, not so much. Now, leaders are on the hook to be more transparent — because in many ways they don’t have a choice. The best advice to leaders, therefore, is to be intentional about how you are being transparent.
Finding out isn’t information-sharing: Admittedly the people we talked with during our focus groups don’t speak for everyone in government. But in my experience, people don’t like “finding out” about what is about to change in drips and drabs because it sets them on edge and it makes it hard for them to trust what information they are getting. And then what happens? They invariably make up enough story to glue facts and impressions together — often inaccurately — leading to, yes, more anxiety. Once this occurs, it can be very difficult for leaders to re-gain control of the narrative, much less the angst that is building up.
Information-sharing should be part of the change process. Sharing information must be the result of an intentional and comprehensive approach that is part of the change initiative, and part of the change leader’s change strategy. Instead of bits and pieces delivered — or worse, leaked — over time, information needs to be shaped to provide an overarching narrative (story) that people can take in, digest, and process. And once isn’t enough: One all hands or one email doesn’t do it. The change story must be told and re-told, updated, and told again throughout the life of the change process at every opportunity. Not having an information-sharing strategy means that leaders — and especially mid-level managers and front-line supervisors — are likely to experience greater difficulty figuring out what to say and what not to say, how to “tell the change story” if you will, so that it is credible for their teams — not to mention for themselves. No wonder key messaging often doesn’t cascade down-and-in with sufficient impact and frequency!
Do you share everything you know? Of course not. Leaders make hard judgments every day about what to disclose and what not to disclose with respect to a change. It can be an incredibly delicate balance to strike, particularly if it involves high-stakes organizational change — mergers and acquisitions, staff layoffs, or new governance for example. Setting these instances aside, however, the vast majority of change efforts rely on information and knowledge sharing in order to be successful — from digital modernizations and business process transformations to standing up a new website, introducing new leadership, onboarding new team members, training, and facilitating continuity for cross-functional working groups, to name just a few.
Knowledge is power. There is another side to all of this related to knowledge-sharing that is worth considering: When you share what you know you are sharing some of your power. An “industrial age” leadership style says that to keep power you must withhold knowledge. But we are way past post-industrial and now live in a digital age where proactively sharing knowledge actually increases your power as a leader, boosts your impact, expands “leaderliness” down and into your organization, and creates a climate in which change is not anathema but instead can be woven into the fabric of the work everyone is committed to day-in-and-day-out.
Saving to the cloud instead of to your desk-top isn’t just a technology change — it is a mindset change. People may be uncomfortable sharing what they know lest they lose “hold” of some piece of the ground they have (consciously or unconsciously) claimed over time. It may feel to some that they are relinquishing a key element of what they have worked hard to do to distinguish themselves in their role. They may feel that they risk losing control, stature, independence, or even perhaps losing what they perceive to be a degree of power they feel they have (actually or not) in the overall organizational dynamic. So, when as a leader, you encounter resistance to sharing knowledge, or even using SharePoint or another kind of collaboration tool, consider that even this shift may reflect a fear far more profound than saving to the cloud or even keeping things the way they’ve always been.
We are meaning-seeking creatures: Some of the meaning people create for themselves in an organization can run very deep. It may go to their sense of worth, their identity and how they validate themselves as part of the team. It is why sharing information about the change and the change process is so important. People need to know not just the ”what” but also the “why.” They need a bridge from where they are to where they need to go. Information sharing provides that bridge. People want more than just the “how-to” or where to click or what to do. They need the “what for” — and they need it over and over and over again. They need context and purpose because that is how they can “see” where they are in the change process. It builds organizational muscle and reduces resistance.to change. It makes people smarter, and it builds confidence and trust in leadership. What better reason to share what you know!
Nina is the Change Management Practice Lead at the consulting firm LMI where she also serves as a Senior OCM Consultant supporting government clients in the planning and implementation of a wide variety of change efforts. She is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Fellows in Change Management Program and the Change Management Advanced Practitioners (CMAP) Certification Program at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and is ProSci trained. She holds an MS in Organization Development and an MA in Communications.
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