Strategic Communication & Cultural Transformation
The purpose of strategic communication to achieve cultural transformation is to win the hearts and minds of all employees through direct intervention.
Historically, organizations have relied on the chain of command to "cascade" new goals, strategies, methods, etc., throughout the organization. Cascading has always been an inefficient method, with numerous opportunities for the message to get diluted. Further, cascading offers resistant managers the opportunity to subvert or change the message at will. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in today's world there simply isn't time to use cascading as a method of organizational change.
Direct intervention is essential because change is not the natural order of things. Left to its own devices, the organization would continue on the same path as before. Managers would encourage this trend because their own power is wrapped in the current ways of doing things. Put to a vote in most organizations, change would be resoundingly defeated.
Massive change is best understood as a guerilla movement, even if initiated by the CEO. Any guerilla leader bent on gaining control of a country knows his first move must be to take control of radio stations, TV stations, and newspapers. Those leaders understand it is critical to control the means of talking directly to the people.
As practiced by Change Leadership Services, strategic communication to achieve cultural transformation is a direct intervention process using various media, saturating the audience with targeted, timed, relevant, logical, and emotional messages. That strategic process flow is based on leading people through the evolution of commitment phases. The steps of the process answer the questions employees ask themselves as they consider commitment:
