Four Questions to Ask Before You Announce a Change

By Dr. Michael Asiedu-Antwi, Founder, AxiomVerve Consulting Ltd.

The riskiest day of any change

The day a change is announced is the day it becomes real for people. Before it, the change lives in board papers and leadership meetings. After it, every manager, supervisor and team member starts to form a view. They ask what it means for them, whether they believe it, and whether they will go along with it.

Most change initiatives fail for reasons that have little to do with the plan itself. They fail because the people asked to carry the change were unprepared for it, and nobody checked. In many organisations, especially where respect for seniority runs deep, resistance stays quiet. It shows up as silence, polite agreement in the meeting and very little movement afterwards. A quiet organisation can look ready long before it is.

A quiet organisation can look ready long before it is.

So before you announce, pause and ask four questions. They cover four areas of change readiness, which are leadership, people, structure and communication. Research and practice show these areas matter most for change that people adopt rather than endure.

A note for readers of our LinkedIn card of 5 November. The card listed these areas as leadership and structure, people, governance, and communication. In this article we use a single word for each area so they are easier to remember. Governance now sits within leadership, and structure is an area of its own. The substance of the four questions is unchanged.

1. Leadership – are we leading this, or announcing it?

People watch what leaders do far more closely than what they say. They conclude that a change matters when senior leaders stay visibly involved, rather than handing it to a project team and stepping back. Leaders also set the governance of the change. They decide who makes which decisions and how progress is overseen.

Three things to check.

• Is the leadership team genuinely united? A strong leadership team is more than a room full of strong leaders. If even one senior leader is quietly unconvinced, their part of the organisation will know within a few days.
• Can every line manager explain it? People look first to their own manager to interpret a change. Managers need to be briefed before anyone else, and equipped to answer their team’s hardest questions.
• Will people be prepared before it affects them? Preparation before launch, and rolling the change out in phases, lets early lessons shape what comes later.

2. People – have we given our people what they need to succeed?

What people resist is the loss of security, status and competence, more than the change itself. Readiness is built over time, rather than decreed.

Three things to check.

• Will people get the training and practice they need, before they are expected to perform in the new way?
• Do the people affected have a real say in how the change is carried out? People are far more committed to a change they have helped to shape.
• Do people know where to turn if the change causes them stress or worry, and will those who adopt the new ways be recognised for it?

3. Structure – will commitments turn into action?

Many change programmes are rich in meetings and poor in movement. Commitments turn into action when the right structures are in place. These include clear owners and dates, a route for concerns to travel, and regular tracking of progress.

Three things to check.

• Does every session end in concrete actions with owners and dates?
• If someone raises a concern, will it reach a person who can act on it? A clear route for feedback and escalation turns resistance into useful information.
• Is progress tracked, and are people held to their commitments, with the team sharing ownership of success rather than leaving it to a project office?

4. Communication – will people hear the same story, and understand what it means for them?

Communication is a series of conversations, more than a single announcement, however well written. People need to hear a consistent message several times, through several channels, from people they trust.

Three things to check.

• Is one consistent story told through several channels, from the chief executive to every team, with a genuine route for questions to travel back up?
• Does each group hear what the change means for them, including their career, security and growth, and are we honest about any losses?
• Have we planned the second and third conversations, as well as the first announcement?

A quick readiness check

Go back through the twelve checks above with your leadership team. For each one, agree an honest answer of Yes, Partly or No.

There is one important caution. This check tells you what your leadership team believes about readiness. Your people may see things quite differently, and the gap between the two is where most change programmes run into trouble. Readiness also shifts once change is underway, so measure it again during implementation, as well as at the start.

From a quick check to a clear picture

The four questions are a good start. For a change that really matters, leaders need more than their own view. They need to hear honestly from the people who will carry it.

That is why we developed the AxiomVerve Change Readiness Diagnostic. It turns these four areas into twelve measurable elements, and asks your people directly through an anonymous survey, followed by focus groups at each level where people can speak freely. The result is a readiness heat map by area, element and group. It shows where you are strong, where the gaps are, and which teams need most support, before you announce anything.

The announcement is the moment a change becomes real. Make sure your organisation is ready for it.