Communications: Rules of thumb to communicate change

Communicating change is especially chal-lenging. Answer the questions: Why is this change necessary? What’s in it for me? What’s next? and What can go wrong? Think hard about what the unvoiced questions are and preemptively answer them. Use in-person and interactive events when communicating change that is complex, emotional or subjective. Don’t expect a top-down memo to do the job.

Related Best Practices

• Changing Your Organization

Author

The author of this page is Terry Gardiner

Terry Gardiner is the founder and President of Silver Lining Seafoods and NorQuest Seafoods - a medium-size Alaska seafood processing company; and currently a Board member of the Anvil Corporation, an employee-owned company specializing in oil and gas engineering.

His co-operative experiences include member director of the Commercial Fishermen Co-operative association; creation of legislation for the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank; and advisor to the US Dept of Health and Social Services for the state Health CO-OPs.

Terry served ten years as a member of the Alaska House of Representatives -several legislative committee chairmanships, Speaker of the House, Chairman of the Alaska Criminal Code Commission and board member on various state and federal boards and commissions.

His non-profit experiences include National Policy Director for the Small Business Majority in Washington DC; working with the Herndon Alliance and ForTerra.

Terry authored the leadership book, "Six-Word Lessons to Build Effective Leaders: 100 Lessons to Equip Your People to Create Winning Organizations".

For more check: Terry Gardiner Long bio