Phase 3: Communicate

Communicate (and Over Communicate)

With a vision and strategy in place, the Core Change Team (CCT) was ready to engage the organization and execute the plan. The team had developed an onboarding strategy and program that allowed for each Program Manager to learn about the new organization, the processes they support, and provided networking opportunities that result in a Program Management Community of Practice. In this phase the CCT worked to motivate and engage the Program Managers by hosting a series of hands on learning opportunities, brown bag sessions, guest speaker series while maintaining a focus on clearly communicating the new roles, responsibilities and processes. Open, ongoing communication was critical in this phase as Program Managers need time to process the new information, ask questions and adjust to the changes. “Most change programs fail at the outset because of a failure to properly communicate the urgency of the circumstances.” (ExperiencePoint, 2019)

Motivate
The program was kicked off with an All Program Managers meeting where leaders and CCT shared with the mission, vision, values and goals of the onboarding program. This kick off drove excitement and energy among the Program Managers who were eager to begin.

Communicate
With the team grounded in why they are aligning to a new structure and processes it was time to expand on the communication plan and clearly align the Program Managers on next steps. The focus of this step was to ensure the Program Managers had the opportunity to read, hear and engage with the information explaining the changes and had the opportunity to ask questions in team and individual settings over a period of time (spanning the Act and Consolidate phases) with key messaging appearing in all communication mechanisms including newsletters, email and social medial channels. “The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations and preferably from different people.” (Lencioni, 142).