Mitigating Change Risk: Understanding Why Change Management Fails 

In our series on change management, we have covered how to manage change in the workplace and how to plan for it—and what’s included.

In this third article, we talk to Mike Klein about the importance of effective internal communication when it comes to managing change.

Ultimately, a quality change management strategy is about managing risk—understanding what could go wrong and making plans to mitigate those threats. Below are three of the most common reasons that change management fails, along with expert-provided solutions, so you can build out a foolproof change strategy using the outline provided above—without any blind spots. 

Problem #1: Lack of Effective Internal Communication 

Generally, most leaders are successful in communicating the “why” behind a proposed change in order to get buy-in and reduce resistance from employees before beginning the change initiative. 

This “why” is often referred to as a change narrative—a story that creates a shared understanding of the past, provides an explanation for the change planned today, and offers a positive projection for the future. 

An effective change narrative connects employees to the organization’s larger mission and strategy throughout the entire change process; however, most employers fail to think through how that information will be delivered, who will deliver it, and at what cadence it will be delivered beyond the initial emails, all-hands announcements, and departmental meetings. 

As the excitement of the primary announcement fades, and employees return to the tunnel vision of their daily tasks, motivation and engagement in the change initiative often dwindles—resulting in a botched change management process. 

Expert Solution With Mike Klein

Mike Klein is an internal and social communication consultant interested in enabling communication leaders who aim to make a difference in their organizations and communities. Klein’s specific areas of interest include measurement, influence, segmentation, and leadership. 

He is the author of “From Lincoln to LinkedIn, the 55 Minute Guide to Social Communication,” a manual for mobilizing peer-to-peer communication in communities and organizations, and, more recently, was an expert guest on S2Verify’s America Back to Work: Expert Interview Series.

Klein’s top recommendation for refining change management communication: separate out HR communications from internal communications. 

“Internal communication is a business function, not just an HR function; the challenge is that you’ve got competing KPIs.”

Internal comms should be a separate function from HR—especially during times of change—because HR has its own KPIs and limited budget, meaning it’s usually focused on tailoring comms to drive HR goals.

But, change management is about organizational objectives, not just HR goals. 

Internal comms professionals are trained to leverage communications that drive desired business outcomes per the holistic company agenda. This is not to say that internal comms won’t deliver the HR message—they will—it will just be strategically intertwined with the other goals of the change. 

Relatedly, internal comms is usually tuned in directly to company culture, and responsible in many ways for creating it, meaning they’re better suited to help build a communication plan that resonates with employees. Through their specific expertise, they’ll know the best time and the best way to deliver those messages (remember: 70% of employees choose their supervisors as their preferred senders of personal messages during change). 

Klein also recommends keeping key leaders and employees in the know consistently throughout the change—so they’re never blindsided (even if it means including them in sensitive conversations). This will keep morale and engagement up and turnover down during the transition. 

“Bear in mind that whatever the risks are of having somebody in that [sensitive] conversation, they may be dwarfed by the risks of leaving that person out and having that conversation explode when it hits the marketplace.”

Learn More Here

→ For more expert tips on leveraging internal comms to manage through change, listen or watch the episode with Mike Klein here.

To learn from other experts, Catherine Morgan speaks to a lack of empathy, and Massella Dukuly speaks to a lack of alignment in the C-suite.