2. COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
• Phase 1: Prechange approval
• Phase 2: Developing the need for change
• Phase 3: Midstream change
• Phase 4: Confirming the change
3. PRECHANGE APPROVAL PHASE
• How to launch the communications plan?
• Creating the guiding coalition (Kotter, 1996)
• Members of the leadership team have made a commitment to establish a better working
and living environment for animals and trainers (Boyer, Castro, Fraley, Hoffman, Loken, &
Norris, 2016).
• Generating short-term wins
• Package the change into smaller change steps that are visible improvements
• Approach and convince other key stakeholders
• 23,000 team members
• 1,500 dedicated to animal welfare, training, husbandry and veterinary care
• Employees, investors, suppliers, customers, government regulatory organizations, and the
public media
4. PRECHANGE APPROVAL PHASE
• The technology needed to accomplish the plan?
• Access to the Worldwide web to include wireless
• Empowers subordinates to seek information from other sources to innovate.
• Leverage shared diagnosis and mutual engagement.
• Close circuit TV
• Communicating the change vision
• Showcase leadership team and other stakeholders with interviews, announce training opportunities, publicly
recognize employees, replay meetings and forums that communicate changes.
• Intranet with social media
• Encourage healthy discussion among leadership team and other team members.
• Share lessons learned and good business practices.
• Virtual classroom
• Training and education anytime, anywhere with anyone.
• Share drive
• Post employee observation reports and animal wellness reports trainers (Boyer et al., 2016).
• Post individual career planning progress reports that allows for training implementation feedback (Boyer et al., 2016).
5. DEVELOPING THE NEED FOR CHANGE PHASE
• Leadership team creates awareness of the need for change by listening, learning
along with stakeholders, as well as engaging in a two-way communication process
as the entire organization moves through the states of the change process.
• Establishing a sense of urgency and enthusiasm (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2012).
• Identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities (Kotter, 1995).
• Sharing of competitive data strengthening the stakeholders desire for change
(Cawsey et al., 2012).
• Articulate the change with the specific steps to be taken (Cawsey et al., 2012).
• Reassure stakeholders that everyone will be treated with dignity and respect.
6. MIDSTREAM CHANGE PHASE
• How to test the communications plan effectiveness and the impact of
management’s response to the organizational change?
• Create strategies to create commitment
• Asking employees for feedback (Boyer et al., 2016).
• Properly training supervisors, administrators, and managers (Boyer et al., 2016).
7. MIDSTREAM CHANGE PHASE
• How to generate feedback for continuous improvement? (Boyer et al., 2016).
• Feedback Efficiency
• Evolution
• Encouragement
• Improving worker motivation
• Performance improvement
• Ownership of own work
• Reinforce team work
8. MIDSTREAM CHANGE PHASE
• How to address negative responses or communications about the change?
(Boyer et al., 2016).
• Address personal concerns first
• Tailor information to people’s expectation
• Know the pros and cons of the your change
9. CONFIRMING THE CHANGE
• Communicating and celebrating success (Cawsey et al., 2012).
• Mark the progress
• Reinforce commitment
• Reduce stress
• Consolidating gains and producing more change (Kotter, 1996).
• Identified unfinished tasks (Cawsey et al., 2012).
• Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents (Cawsey et
al., 2012).
10. CONFIRMING THE CHANGE
• How your communication plan can affect organizational change?
• Communication challenge must match with the communications channel selected
(Cawsey et al., 2012).
• Routine information
• Mass e-mails
• Standard reports published on the company website
• Complex, ambiguous, and personally relevant information
• Personalized letter and/or e-mails
• Telephone conversations (allows two-way communication)
• Video conferencing (allows two-way communication)
• Face-to-face communications (allows two-way communication)
11. REFERENCES
Boyer, A., Castro, J., Fraley, M., Hoffman, S, Loken, T., & Norris J. (2016, March 22).
Re: Learning Team C’s organization change process [online forum presentation].
Retrieved from https://newsclassroom3.Phoenix.Edu/Classroom/#/contextid/
OSIRIS:49850902/context/co/view/activityDetails/activity/5ac95fb2-3a17-
4597-a772-3db4a73e9ffe/expanded/False/tab/Assignment%20Files
Cawsey, T. F., Deszca, G., & Ingols, C. (2012). Organizational change: an action-
oriented toolkit (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading changes. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press
Editor's Notes
Leading changes requires a solid communications plan.
In Chapter 9, Action Planning and Implementation, Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, (2012) mention that there are four phases to a communications plan. These four phases are the following: prechange approval, developing the need for change, midstream change, and confirming the change.
During the prechange approval phase, the question of how to launch the communications plan must be addressed.
Additionally, the technology needed to accomplish the communications plan must be addressed during the prechange approval phase.
During the second phase, developing the need for change, awareness must be created as well as a sense of urgency. Sharing of competitive data and articulating the change with specific steps is also essential.
During phase three, midstream change, the communications plan effectiveness and the impact of management’s response can be measured by asking employees for feedback as well as assessing training at the managerial level.
Continuous Improvement of change from employee observation reports starts with feedback. Continuous improvement entails recognition of evolution of an employee’s career, providing encouragement, making changes to capture performance improvement while employees recognize that the results are their own work as part of a team effort.
Addressing negative response or communications about the change is at the heart of leading changes.
Addressing Personal concerns is a must when change is involved and as a team we will work towards ensuring the staff knows and understand that we are concern with their issues and will try to address them and work towards an easy transition.
Tailor information to people’s expectation, holding firm views of how the world works such as mental models.
Knowing the pros and cons of the change helps us to understand the change that is about to take place, it will make it lot easier to counter any questions that might arise and not look confused or in a worst case scenario to look like a company that is unaware of is going on.
The last phase is confirming the change. Communicating and celebrating success is the most forgotten step in leading changes. As an organization celebrates success, it consolidates gains to produce more change.
The communication plan must match the communications channel. There is information that is consider routine which can be send in mass e-mails or posted as standard reports. However, there is personally relevant information that must be carefully managed with the use, for example, of face-to-face communications
References:
Boyer, A., Castro, J., Fraley, M., Hoffman, S, Loken, T., & Norris J. (2016, March 22).
Re: Learning Team C’s organization change process [Online forum presentation]. Retrieved from https://newclassroom3.phoenix.edu/Classroom/#/contextid/OSIRIS:49850902/con
text/co/view/activityDetails/activity/5ac95fb2-3a17-4597-a772- 3db4a73e9ffe/expanded/False/tab/Assignment%20Files
Cawsey, T. F., Deszca, G., & Ingols, C. (2012). Organizational change: an action-
oriented toolkit (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading changes. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press
