The change story is an important component for a unified, credible, comprehensible and emotional communication. It illuminates the meaning and purpose of the change. It creates transparency by communicating the urgency, rationality, and plausibility of change.
It is elaborated and told, taking into account the overall project and client organization. This leads to the creation of an authentic and understandable change story that is spread throughout the organization from headquarter to dealership. It serves as the most important orientation and contains the crucial decisive messages of change
Center your change story on “Why” the change is needed:
Clear and stakeholder-specific definition of the answers to the questions; why would a client want to introduce the project, how does client plan to achieve this, and what are our client’s objectives with the project?
Your content needs to crisp and fully defined. Some key elements of your content strategy should have a clear description of strategic goals. You should be able to generate a “Case for Change“, meaning a sense of the change. The content should be precise about the advantages of the change. Formulate your content with key arguments for the change. The content should have a description of “non-messages“, meaning messages that should be avoided to be spread, e.g. cost reduction and workforce reduction. At a high-level, the definition of certain fields of change: future structure, roles, as well as leadership- and steering culture.
Some stakeholders are clear and obvious:
The dealer principle and –management and all other employees of the client want to be involved and integrated. But in our opinion, this is by no means enough.
For a smooth change with acceptance and enthusiasm of the team, it is crucial to know and classify the relevant stakeholders. A joint stakeholder analysis focuses on other stakeholders, such as work councils, owners, customers, suppliers, regulators, possible “gray eminences” and others. It is only by carefully managing this diversity that we can create good framework conditions and make the right people the drivers and leaders of the transformation
To create a changing momentum for long-lasting success of the project:
1. Spread the client change story to inspire champions
2. Equip champions to spread the story
3. Employ multichannel messaging to foster team collaboration
4. Measure the change and communicate visible success
You must communicate:
An organizational change management project sequence is not dependent solely on the pure tracking of time and budget planning. You need a partner that support you in the development and implementation of appropriate and target-oriented communication measures in order to promote the best possible cooperation and motivation of all stakeholders from C-suite to operational level teams.
Organizational Alignment:
Organizational alignment ensures alignment according to the project objectives, ensuring organizational structure as well as roles, process, and system alignment. It focuses on the clear definition of roles and responsibilities critical for successful interplay and provides guidance for synchronizing and stabilizing in preparation for transition. Organizational alignment manages knowledge transition and captures critical know-how. Ensure that new definitions of roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and new processes and interfaces are defined inter-divisionally and cross-functionally. Identify, build up and train capabilities for those roles to ensure the best fit. Enable all employees to fulfill their roles. Redefine and adjust the reward & incentive system and the targets on a team and cross-functional basis.
