​Hey Reader,​

Trains are by far my favorite way to travel. I love being in a big, cushy seat in a little car with the freedom and space to move around and the ability to look out the window and actually see something (unlike planes).

I also like being on the move without being stressed or responsible for how fast we're going or how we're getting somewhere (unlike cars). And I love that I can show up to the station a few minutes before the scheduled departure and simply walk on!

I’m on the Amtrak from Boston back to NYC right now (with a window seat!) on my way home from the Annual Strategic Internal Communications Conference where I facilitated the opening workshop, Crafting Communication that Catalyzes Change.

I was a little nervous about sharing Commcoterie's change communication pillars with my fellow internal comms experts, because the way Commcoterie designs change strategies actually takes the traditional way to do it and flips it around to focus on what matters most — the people.

And that means we communicate change a little differently as well.

I was relieved and excited when folks weren't just receptive to what I shared but super enthusiastic about taking it back to their orgs so they could experiment with better ways to design and communicate change. Here's what I shared with them:

The standard way to create a communication strategy is in this order: what, how, who

• Create your message (or key messages) — WHAT
  • Decide where, when, and how you want to deliver it
• Think about whether there might be resistance to your message and decide HOW you can combat that resistance
• Make a list of stakeholders — WHO
  • Determine WIIFM or “what’s in it for me?” for each stakeholder group
  • Maybe send some additional segmented messages based on WIIFM
• Keep sending messages
• Celebrate the success of your change — YAY (jk, not really)

I very rarely see that lead to real, lasting change (if anything, I get a call after change has been communicated like that so that I can come in and fix things).

Turn it around, and you have a much more effective and engaging strategy

First, start with curiosity

Forget about your message for a minute. Who are you communicating with?

Who are all of the different individuals or groups who could potentially be touched by this change? Why is the change important to them?

This doesn’t mean why you think they should think the change is important. Why is it actually important to them — or not? If it’s not important, why? How could it be?

A deep curiosity about the people you want to communicate with will set any strategy up for success.

Then, channel compassion

Compassion is a sympathetic consciousness of someone else's distress along with a desire to alleviate it.

So how will this change impact the people you have just centered in your strategy? How can you reduce the burdens and barriers to change for them?

Now, distress might seem dramatic, but think about it: say you’re launching management training. Super simple and standard. 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. That can cause distress!

And you haven’t even gotten to the important (actual change) part: the managers who need to take the training actually doing the new management behaviors you want them to do.

While you might not be able to alleviate the distress by canceling the training, there are other ways to alleviate it (simply validating that change is a burden is a start!).

What can we do with our communication strategy to not only alleviate distress, but do the opposite?

Then comes clarity

What should be communicated? When and where? This still isn’t what you want to communicate to an audience; it’s audience-focused messaging that gives the audience the information they need and want.

Clarity can look like embedding change comms in existing organic comms to reduce the amount of messaging people receive. It’s knowing the best mediums, formats, channels, and frequencies for your audiences. It’s striking the speaker-focused phrase "we're happy to announce" from your vocabulary!

Starting with your message, moving to mitigating resistance, and then considering stakeholders — what, how, who — is not the way to communicate change

Starting with people, channeling compassion, and then ensuring you're communicating with clarity — who, how, what — is.

And you can use these pillars at any scale, from sending a single email to designing an entire strategy — because they're a great way to not just communicate change, but to design change strategies in general.

When it comes to change, curiosity, compassion, and clarity are the winning combo to connect with people and guide them on their change journey.

I’d love to hear what changes — big or small — you have coming up through the end of 2024. Reply to this email and let me know.

Talk soon,

Caitlin Founder, Commcoterie

P.S. — We’re talking all about change resistance at our next Organizational Change Office Hours on Thursday, July 25th at 2pm EST on Zoom, and how channeling compassion not only makes us better communicators, but helps us design more impactful, successful change strategies from the very start.

​You can register here, and please share with anyone else you think might benefit.

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Resources online & IRL

In Commcoterie's latest blog post, Why do employees resist change?, I dig into what change resistance is, why employees might resist change, and what leaders can do about change resistance in order to lead more effective, compassionate, and successful 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!

​Accenture’s Pulse of Change: 2024 Index identifies and ranks six factors of change affecting businesses—Technology, Talent, Economic, Geopolitical, Climate and Consumer & Social—using a range of key business indicators, such as labor productivity and IT spending. It then compares this data to a survey of more than 3,400 C-suite leaders on how these factors are impacting their organizations. A comparison reveals insight into which affect companies the most and their preparedness to respond in 2024.

In Constant Change Is Rewriting the Psychological Contract with Employees in HBR, Nadya Zhexembayeva says that growing employee dissatisfaction in the workplace can be explained by the likelihood that “psychological contracts” between employees and organizations — the implicit mutual understanding of each side’s obligations to the other — in many companies still reflect a past in which change was intermittent. Nadya argues that in a time of continuous change, these contracts will need to be revisited, and she proposes some actions that companies can take to renegotiate the terms.

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