GM541 Unit 8 Fair Process Change Communication Example

Conversations Before Broadcasts: A Unit 8 Change Communication Strategy for an Uptime Contract Shift

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Purdue University Global

GM541: Organizational Transformation and Change Leadership

Unit 8 Change Communication Strategy

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[Date]

The refrigeration service firm, its groups and every date are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and studies cited are real.

Part 1: What the Draft Plan Did Well

The draft plan has real strengths. It states a clear rationale: grocery chains increasingly want guaranteed outcomes rather than scheduled visits, and two large customers have already moved to competitors offering uptime guarantees. It is early, beginning three months before the first zone converts. And it commits the chief executive personally, through the launch video and town hall.

Part 2: What the Draft Plan Misses

Every element of the draft flows one way, from headquarters outward. The video tells; the town hall answers questions after the decisions are made; the web page posts updates. Nothing in the plan asks the people most affected what they know or think before decisions are final, and nothing tells them afterward why their concerns were or were not acted on.

The plan also addresses everyone at once. Dispatchers, technicians, account managers and customers would hear the same message at the same time, though the change means very different things to each. Laurie Lewis's research on change communication finds that implementers often rely on broad dissemination when the situation calls for targeted dialogue with the groups whose cooperation is most uncertain (Lewis, 2011).

Part 3: The Replacement Logic

W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne describe fair process as three elements: engagement, involving people in decisions by asking for their input; explanation, making clear why final decisions were made; and expectation clarity, stating the new rules and what people will be held to. Their research found that people accept outcomes they dislike when the process that produced them was fair (Kim & Mauborgne, 1997). The strategy below builds each element into the sequence.

People who will lose something from this change are more likely to accept it if they were asked before it was decided and told afterward why their objections did not carry the day.

Part 4: The Sequence of Audiences

Weeks 1 to 2: dispatchers, individually. Each of the six dispatchers meets the project sponsor and their supervisor separately. The conversation covers what is changing in their role, what new roles are available, what the timeline is and what the dispatcher knows that the project needs to capture. Nothing is announced to anyone else before these meetings.

Weeks 3 to 6: technicians, zone by zone. In each zone, the field supervisor, the union steward and a project lead meet the zone's technicians together. The meetings begin by asking technicians what the sensors will miss in their stores, using the pilot zone's findings as an example, before explaining the plan. The steward's presence signals that on-call pay and routes are on the table.

Weeks 5 to 7: account managers. The sales director and the finance lead meet account managers to work through the pricing model and the uptime data available for each customer. Account managers review the draft customer letter before it is sent.

Weeks 8 to 10: customers. Account managers, not headquarters, contact each grocery chain's facilities director, with uptime data for that customer and a written explanation of the new contract.

Week 10: all-staff announcement. The chief executive's video and town hall come last, confirming what each group has already heard and discussed, rather than announcing it.

Messages, Messengers and Channels

Each audience hears a different core message from a different messenger. Dispatchers hear from the sponsor and their supervisor, in person, that their knowledge is needed and a new role is available. Technicians hear from their own supervisor and steward, in zone meetings, that the system will be adjusted for what it cannot see. Account managers hear from the sales director, in working sessions, that they will have data and a pricing model before any renewal. Customers hear from their own account manager, by visit and letter, what the new contract guarantees and how uptime will be reported. All staff hear from the chief executive, by video and town hall, why the firm is changing and what has been decided.

Two Standing Mechanisms

Alert review boards. In each zone, a monthly meeting of technicians, the zone supervisor and a monitoring analyst reviews disputed alerts and missed problems. Technicians can challenge alert thresholds, and the board can change them. This gives the field a standing way to correct the system, which the pilot showed it needs.

A posted decision log. The project team keeps a log, visible to all staff, of every concern raised through any channel, what was decided and why. Decisions that went against the field are listed with the reasoning. This is the explanation element of fair process, made permanent.

How Success Will Be Judged

The strategy succeeds if no dispatcher learns of the change from someone other than the sponsor, if every zone meeting produces a written list of concerns, if the decision log records a response to each concern within two weeks and if technicians' survey ratings of whether they were consulted improve from the pilot zone's baseline. Balogun and Johnson's research on middle managers shows that where official explanation is missing, people build their own through informal conversation (Balogun & Johnson, 2004); the sequence is designed so the official explanation arrives first.

References

Balogun, J., & Johnson, G. (2004). Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 47(4), 523-549. https://doi.org/10.2307/20159600

Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (1997). Fair process: Managing in the knowledge economy. Harvard Business Review, 75(4), 65-75.

Lewis, L. K. (2011). Organizational change: Creating change through strategic communication. Wiley-Blackwell.