​Hey Reader,​

At our Organizational Change Office Hours last week, we dug into how to channel compassion to design a more effective and seamless organizational change strategy. After I sent out the replay, I got this response from someone who had attended live:

"I never, ever thought a 'soft' concept like compassion could be a strategic tool for managing change. THANK YOU, because it feels right to me. I'm excited to bring this back to the rest of our leadership team because it makes so much sense (and, as you mentioned, is aligned with a lot of companies' values, including ours!)."

I love hearing these types of comments on a personal level, but I also get so excited that the concept resonates with folks, because it works — and I want to see it catch on in more organizations.

If you weren't able to join us for Office Hours, compassion is simply a sympathetic consciousness of someone else's distress along with a desire to alleviate it.

Not many leaders want to acknowledge that there might be distress at work, but think about it:

Say you’re launching management training. Super simple and standard organizational change! All of a sudden, a six-session management training pops up on someone’s calendar. Maybe it conflicts with meetings they had, or they had no clue that they were part of it, or they’re just bogged down and don’t want another thing on their plate, or they’re promoting someone on their team and now they have to stop and wonder, should the promoted person take the training too? Who should they ask?

All of this can cause distress!

And this change process hasn't even gotten to the important (actual change) part: the fact that the managers need to learn and then do the new management behaviors the training is supposed to teach them.

If you caused these folks distress, do you think they are going to skip into this training, ready to roll? No, they're not.

Of course you don't want to alleviate the distress by canceling the training, but you can alleviate distress with your overall strategy. And the earlier you do this, the better.

So here are a few inflection points in the change process where you can leverage compassion to design a better strategy:

Ideation: From the very spark of an idea

The moment a leader says (to themselves or others) "Hey, we’re going to do this new thing," they should think: What challenges or barriers do we anticipate for people? So often, folks get an idea and jump straight into project mode, but considering a change's impact on people can alter the direction of a change strategy itself — and for the better, because the earlier you think of challenges and barriers, the earlier you can design a strategy that supports folks on their journey to your desired future state.

Navigation: Managing the project, supporting the people

If you come to a crossroads during your change and you’re deciding between a few different paths, before you get too deep into your spreadsheets and project management tools, consider the human beings: How will each path impact employees? The aim is not to choose a path that everyone likes; the aim is to consider the impact of a decision on your people to help you imagine the real-life outcomes of your cost calculations and projections.

Communication: Asking someone to change their behavior causes disruption

Each and every time you’re going to ask people to do something differently, your strategic north star should be: How can we reduce burdens and barriers to people adopting these new behaviors? Will your email shock folks or smooth things out? Will your invitation irk or induce a sense of ease? Will managers who have to reinforce these behaviors feel abandoned or empowered?

Compassion, the sympathetic consciousness of someone else's distress along with a desire to alleviate it, is a gut check, and one that results in better, people-centered strategies every single time.

Does your organization leverage compassion in its change strategy? How do you think considering compassion at various inflection points could make a difference? Let me know!

Talk soon,

Caitlin Founder, Commcoterie

P.S. — Did you miss our last Office Hours? Want to catch the recording? Just reply here and I'm happy to share.

Resources & Reading About Purpose-driven Change

​BLD Southeast is coming to the Peach State, and I'll be there, doing a workshop about — what else — organizational change for purpose-driven companies. If you're in the Southeast and a B Corp or simply B-curious, join us in Atlanta in September!

In Food as You Know It Is About to Change, David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times digs into what the Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett calls a "food polycrisis." He writes that, "the pressure on the present food system is not a sign that it will necessarily fail, only that it must change." Here's what that could look like.

Want to (or need to) DIY your change communication strategy, but could really use a second set of eyes? Book The Right Direction Intensive with us! In this affordable, high-ROI opportunity, we collaboratively go through your strategy line by line and let you know if it's going in the right direction. As soon as we're done, you'll be well on your way to knocking your next change out of the park. Here's what people have said about it:

Jennifer Wilkins, an advisor, researcher, and advocate for post growth enterprise and economics, is one of my favorite follows on LinkedIn. In Rivers of Change: Envisioning a Global Wellbeing Economy, she wrote about the process and outcomes of attending an international gathering in Costa Rica on building a global wellbeing economy. She said, "From Indigenous and marginalized voices to those in global climate financing and mining, and from advocates of UBI and future generations' rights to macroeconomic policymakers, the event produced rich insights."

About Us

Commcoterie helps leaders of purpose-driven companies and nonprofits ideate, navigate, and communicate change.

What kinds of change? Any and all! A few of our favorite projects recently have been in the areas of:

• Launching products and services
• Aligning and growing teams
• Designing and facilitating company retreats
• New systems, processes, and tech rollouts
• Mission, values, branding, and culture defining and amplifying
• Strategic planning and implementation

We help our clients uncover and untangle challenges, design people-centered strategies, and create compelling communication that engages stakeholders internally and externally for long-lasting change. Our mission is to help our clients achieve theirs.

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