How Can Leaders Successfully Communicate and Implement Change?

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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: You cite a Harvard Business School study that found 70% of change efforts fail. Were these big or small changes?

MM: The study wasn’t specific to big, mammoth change efforts like reinventing a business model. These were small change efforts. But big or small, most change efforts seem to run into the same brick walls over and over again, and leaders reacted predictably badly 70% of the time.

And it’s actually more serious than that, because not only did the majority of change efforts fail, the failures also threatened to take down the leaders that tried to lead them. A Leadership IQ study found that mismanaging change is actually the number one reason why CEOs get fired; it far outpaced financial performance. Every leader understands the risks are high. Change is hard and when it doesn’t work, there are dire consequences. All that said, we don’t have to let change fail. We can almost guarantee its success if we understand the basic phases and nature of change.

Q: What’s at the core of creating a successful change effort?

MM: There are three questions that have to be answered for a change effort to be successful. If these questions can’t be answered, the change effort is going to fail:

Why do we need to change?Where are we going?How are we going to get there?

The interesting thing is that most successful changes don’t answer just one of these questions; they answer all three. We can, with almost certainty, predict the success or failure of a change effort simply by asking, “Do you understand why we need to change?” and “Do you understand where we are trying to get to?” and “Do you think we can actually pull it off; do you know how we are going to make it happen?” If you can’t get answers to these three questions, the Why, Where and How of change, then your change effort is almost certainly doomed to failure.

And perhaps more importantly, the 30% of change efforts that succeed (according to the Harvard study) tend to pull all three levers simultaneously. They tend to work on the Why, the Where, and the How all at the same time. The problem is that most leaders have a favorite. They work on either the Why, or the Where, or the How. The overwhelming majority of folks do not work on all three simultaneously. Of course, depending on the environment of the organization, some of these are going to be easier or harder than others to pull off.

Q: What’s the most effective way to communicate change?

MM: Letting folks know about change is a pretty tough message to deliver. And the worst way to communicate that message is the yelling-and-screaming approach. Yes, you have to deliver a message that is sufficiently tough so that you can get people to leave a place they like. But the more emotional you make your message; the more likely people are to put their guard up. Emotional content will only make them feel attacked; they’ll box themselves in and they’ll tune out your message.

Instead you have to take a much more low-key approach. Focus on data – the less emotional the message the better. Make the message factual without hyperbole or exaggeration. Let the message be what the message is going to be. Communicate the message in as calm and rational a manner as possible. The more objective your data, the better. Language like “I think” or “My gut tells me” is not convincing.

You’re much better off getting some objective evidence in order to justify why it is we need to leave our present state. Get evidence from third parties: financial, operational, strategic, market, benchmarks. With the objective third-party facts delivered in a calm, rational way you will have the best chance of actually moving people off of the status quo. Get additional evidence from your audience (self-report surveys, focus groups, etc.) as well as from your customers. To the extent that you can get information from really credible sources, not just third party sources, but from people like your customers, patients, etc. you will be giving people a sense that your sources are believable. Doing so will deliver the message that it’s not about you, the CEO/manager, but it is about the customers, patients or shareholders.

And give people some time to process it all. Remember, it may be the first time your people are hearing this message (or at least the first time they’ve needed to pay attention to it). The more educated you can make your people, the more access to can grant them to a similar level of information that you have access to as a leader, the easier your change effort will be. The broader the horizon they can see, the more likely they are to come to the same conclusion that you’ve come to – that change is necessary.

Who is the best person to deliver the communication?

Employees are more likely to listen to their middle managers than their CEO. The employees will look at whatever the CEO puts out in a memo with skepticism until they ask the middle manager, “What do you think? Is that for real? Is this really going to work or is it just going to be like all of the other times?” Employees may turn to some of the more powerful employees to see what they think. CEOs can write memos until they are blue in the face, but at the end of the day it is how managers and key performing employees react to the change effort that is critical.

To learn more about communicating and implementing change in your organization, attend our webinar “Change Management That Lasts.“

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.