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How to overcommunicate without repeating yourself

My formula for organizational change involves too much communication.

Too often, leaders think they are communicating too much. After all, they are in meetings all day and have an open door policy. How could they not be?

But that is not how his people see him.

Sure, strategic leaders spend all day talking…but the typical employee gets very little face-to-face time with them.

If you have 30-minute meetings and work ten hours a day, you can meet a hundred people in a week. That’s assuming you have nothing else to do with your time.

That sounds like a lot.

But what can you learn in 30 minutes?

And how many people do you have under you or who influence your team from the outside? Even with this crazy schedule, you can’t talk to everyone.

The result?

From the perspective of a frontline employee, strategic leaders are too distant to communicate frequently.

And much less overcommunicate.

If you’re driving a change initiative, then your people need to know about it every day. They need to read emails, listen to speeches, and talk to their supervisors about it.

And in all of these, the messages must be the same.

How, however?

If, as a strategic leader, you start emailing your people every day…won’t they tune out?

If you ask your middle managers to relay messages to your people, won’t they get bored?

The thing is, you can easily overcommunicate your vision for change without repeating yourself. Consider all the things you can talk about regarding a change initiative:

The reasons behind the change and the benefits it will bring.

How the change will transform the organization.

What success looks like. This includes clearly defined goals to meet.

The strategic vision, including the goals of the change initiative and how to achieve them.

Your personal vision, including what you hope to see as a result of this change.

Personal stories about you. This could include small wins you’ve had or times in the past where this type of problem led to disaster. This is a great opportunity to show that you are leading by example and embracing change.

Any progress made towards strategic goals, especially if it led to improvements.

Tips, tricks and tactics. For example: clarify policy changes, point to relevant reference materials, and describe how to handle conflicts under the new system.

Acknowledge the fight. Change is hard and stressful. It always requires employees to do extra work and learn new processes, at least at first. It is important to show understanding.

Answer questions and address concerns as they arise.

It’s not even a complete list, but it’s enough to get you started.

After a few cycles of that, your people will understand.

They will understand how and why they are changing.

They will understand that you mean it.

And it won’t be long before they realize that the best way to advance their career is to get on board.