It’s all very well being a blue-sky thinker – but coming up with a brainwave is the easy part. It’s selling the idea to the rest of the organisation that calls for real nous. Neil Gibbons asks how business leaders can inspire their internal audience to embrace new thinking

October 4 1994. The day that fresh-faced Labour leader Tony Blair fired the starting gun for a process of seismic change. In his first party conference speech, the new leader of the Labour Party was serving notice that within a year he would replace Clause IV, the commitment to ‘common ownership of the means of production’ which has been at the heart of the party constitution since 1918.

The move signalled the creation of New Labour and called for a campaign of profound and exhaustive internal communications – because, for Clause IV to be rewritten, Blair needed the buy-in of at least twothirds of the constituency party.

Blair secured his majority in April 1995. While its passage might have seemed serene, it was the result of a frantic campaign of persuasion beneath the surface. The result was a triumph of Blair’s skill and persistence as a communicator.

The preceding months had seen Blair speaking at regional meetings of Labour party members, enthusiastically engaging in dialogue, creating a team of hard-hitting senior advocates and remaining a visible and approachable evangelist for the change. For leaders trying to effect a seminal change in their organisation, this kind of groundwork isn’t just advisable; it’s essential.

However radical the initiative and however large the organisation, business leaders will be familiar with the daunting task of taking a big new idea and getting enough buy-in from their internal stakeholders to make it a workable reality.

Be it a radically new corporate culture; a new product, service or positioning which will require the staff to act as brand ambassadors; or a new strategy or innovation that needs careful explaining, major new initiatives always need the internal audience on board and on side.

For that reason, change shouldn’t be implemented if it’s based on a vague whim. “Leaders are overly familiar with long sighs and disheartened groans from employees when they introduce yet another organisational change or a new initiative,” says Sara LaForest of US-based Kubica LaForest Consulting. “Leaders need to be convinced that the change is indeed needed and value-add, not just a great idea that’s flavour of the month. By focusing on what is needed, the options to create it and the intended results from it, you will determine what change needs to happen, why, how it will occur), and the value. This drives your change reasoning.”

Even if the new initiative has been mapped out meticulously, don’t expect it to be easy. “Communicating change does not come easy to most people,” says Karen Friedman, author of ‘Shut Up and Say Something: Business Communication Strategies to Overcome Challenges and Influence Listeners’. “Neither does embracing it. But one can’t happen without the other. If senior management doesn’t talk to middle management, then middle management can’t communicate openly and honestly to the rank and file who are needed to help any leader accomplish his or her goals.”

She recounts the story of a manufacturer of drug delivery products. “The new general manager had been telling employees he would steer this ship differently so they needed to climb on deck. What he didn’t fully understand is just because he said he’d do something differently wouldn’t make people follow or believe. I urged him to communicate differently in order to give them a safe playing field.

“That meant creating a communications plan and develop people-centric messages that answered their questions. They needed to understand how change would happen, what was expected of them, how soon the company would recognise profits from new investments and what the future looked like.”

But with the right message and the right channels, it can be done. Take financial services firm Grant Thornton. In 2007, following its merger with smaller rival Robson Rhodes, it sought to reposition itself as one of a Big 5, competing not with the mid-tier firms that had been its closest rivals, but jostling with the major accountancy firms for bigger client wins. According to then chief executive Michael Clearly, Grant Thornton wanted “to break down those market perceptions which would not naturally associate Grant Thornton with the larger public audit market”.

Staff needed to understand this change of positioning so the firm turned to Yellow Communications to help sell the idea.

“We persuaded the firm it should come from the top and we decided to lead the campaign with a film introduced and, at relevant points, narrated by Michael Cleary,” says Jeremy Petty, managing director of Yellow Communications.

A highly visible leader is, says Petty, essential at times of major change. But he urges those going through change to make sure that the CEO wants to be more visible and communicative, that he or she is prepared to enter into dialogue – not just diatribe – and that he or she understands the full implications of what they are embarking on. Too often, he says, CEOs fail to step up.

“It’s a largely missed opportunity,” he says.

“It’s not a matter of confidence. It’s more a lack of awareness of just how powerful it is to have a visible, authentic presence inside the organisation, to have conversations and communicate openly and regularly with everyone and, more than that, to truly put the people inside their organisations first, before customers, before shareholders, before anyone.”

At the same time, he warns against overcommitting the CEO at what is already a demanding time. Producing a film reduced some of the face time that the process required.

“The benefits of film are many and varied but for this project it was the consistency of message which was key to the success of the cascade,” he says. “We created communications pack for all managers which included a copy of the film and some guidance notes to help facilitate a discussion with their teams.”

Cleary then embarked on a series of roadshows around the country at many of the firm’s regional centres. These included Q&A sessions based around the film and briefing pack content. “It wasn’t rocket science,” says Petty. “But it was a very effective, and for them, a revolutionary way of getting the CEO to engage with the troops in a positive and open way.”

To encourage staff to truly engage with the idea, leaders need to understand exactly what it is they’re trying to achieve. Stephen Harvill is founder of Creative Ventures, a Dallas-based provider of organisational learning and strategic planning programs. He argues that organisations need to understand that there are two core types of engagement: buy-in and enrolment.

“Buy-in is the lowest form of engagement and is usually sought after by companies who lack the understanding of how momentum and impact is created,” he says. “Think of it like this – when an idea is developed in the ivory towers of upper management and is then pushed downward, the ability to gain engagement is limited by the very nature of the process.”

Yet, buy-in is, he says, the most typical type of engagement searched for by the corporate world. Enrolment, however, is different.

“Enrolment breeds engagement by creating a participatory environment around the development of the idea. If you are involved, you are engaged. Instead of developing your goals and having a roll out meeting to announce them, involve your teams in the development of the goals. Participants become engaged through their participation; they are enrolled in the idea.”

Harvill suggests creating the message as a memorable story rather than something that is disseminated. “Too many view their communication strategy as directional, from me to them. Wrong. The best communication strategies are developed using an opposite strategy, an almost counter-intuitive positioning. Think of the message as a story. Think of the direction of the story as positioned from the receiver’s point of view.”

According to Harvill, Nike, Harley Davidson and LEGO are great examples where both internal and external communications around everything rely on the power of directional story.

“American Express uses the story model with the unique idea of creating a constant interaction through internal communication cycles. This is a web-based model that allows all the chatter, comments, ideas and even gossip around an initiative to have an open and constantly evolving forum. It is a way to create enrolment even if the original idea was based on topdown buy-in.”

Likewise, PepsiCo uses podcasts to create a real storytelling experience. “By keeping them short (3-5 minutes) they connect ‘chapters’ of the new idea or change to their troops,” he says. “They invite different team members to record their stories. This idea is rapidly making its way to an external communication tool as well.”

But it still falls upon the CEO to provide inspiration. Sheila Parry is founder and managing director of employee communications consultancy theblueballroom which earlier this year was asked to advise a company (which asked to remain nameless) that had suffered what Parry describes as “a double whammy of extravagance and the trading downturn”. The parent company sent in internal auditors and consultants and the business was given a directive to lose 20% of costs.

Instilling that frugality presented a real communications challenge: how much to say to whom during period of assessment and planning. The employees were waiting to see how the new CEO would achieve turnaround and there was huge expectation on him combined with insecurity about their own future.

“What do great CEOs do?” asks Parry. “They ask searching questions, listen fast and deep. They identify the best-performing departments and individuals and then engage with these as the core change team and hubs of influence to promote desire to find a solution together (and thus secure own and collective future).”

Communications departments have a role to play in this as well, she says, because they know, or should know, their way round the organisation and understand the business and its drivers.

“They can create opportunities for leaders to display charismatic leadership – such as organising face-to-face events – and furnish leaders with the skills and communication styles that work in challenging circumstances. In our experience, 2009 saw a lot of leaders buried in the business of survival. In 2010, they have had to re-emerge as communicators, winning back confidence with good future stories. Comms experts can also coach them to be an authentic voice of the future business.” 

Parry’s four lessons

Having helped her client CEO to sell his new approach to a sceptical workforce, Parry has identified four key lessons for leaders seeking to inspire employees to buy into new thinking.

The first is that credibility and authenticity of both the message and the messenger are key. “You should set a clear vision but make sure that it’s based on trading realities,” she says. “Big claims like ‘dominate the marketplace’ or ‘gain market share’ are empty without a plan to get there. Long-standing employees may have heard it all before so they have to be convinced that it is plausible and achievable.”

The second lesson is that a refreshingly honest approach panics people a lot less than hearing rumours” about change and avoids people thinking there’s no plan. “On the more positive future directions, the more a strategy is developed with employees, the more likely it is to be believed and implemented,” says Parry.

The third lesson is to give people the time and opportunity to understand and then embrace the change. “Leaders tend to have thought about strategies for longer than their employees are given to understand them,” says Parry. “The communicators’ role is to break down the strategy into tangible scenarios, unravelling the content and working out what needs to be communicated through core messages that create understanding and confidence.

“Communications about this sort of breakthrough change shouldn’t be about telling but explaining and involving and allowing others to own it – the job of communicating filters through the entire organisation. Brand ambassadorship doesn’t come about until real people are able to carry on telling the story, embodying the brand through action.”

And the fourth and final lesson concerns the channel by which the idea is shared. Parry advises leaders to favour face-to-face comms in first phase to establish empathy and clarity. “Channels and campaigns only come in when the new direction is identified and supported by top tiers and big influencers.”