137 | Storytelling, Stakeholders, and Strategy: Communicating Change Right

Too often leaders are in their ivory tower plotting and planning, and you can't create trust and belief when everyone knows the leaders aren't being truly honest about what's coming down the pipeline.

At Inspiring Change, we're here to help build work cultures that bring out the best in people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from people shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa or pop in your earbuds wherever you are. Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Welcome back. If you are a previous listener, welcome. If you are a first-time listener, thanks for being here. Really, really appreciate it. And as I often say at the beginning of these episodes, if you do have 10 seconds just while you're listening, just to give us a little comment and maybe a 5-star rating, uh, that'd be nice. And it really helps to get the podcast out there and get us in front of as many people as possible. So today I'm delighted to be joined by Catherine Fallon, who is London-based and is one of Inspiring Changes' Associates. And we've been doing quite a lot of work in recent weeks and months on change communications, particularly where organizations are going through big transformational change. And I thought, hmm, it'd be kind of interesting perhaps to jump on and have a conversation about the importance of change comms, of stories, and a whole load of other stuff. So, we'll get to that in a second. But before we do, Katherine, hello.

Hello.

So, listen, before we get into what we've been busy on, and we can talk a little bit about the ChangeCom stuff, why don't you tell me a little bit about you, about your career journey, and about what you do today?

I have been specializing in employee engagement and change for nearly 30 years, which is quite scary. Started out actually at a radio station you might have heard of, Capital Radio, doing internal communications there. In just before the dot-com bubble burst, actually. And that was my first experience of leading communications and change through quite a challenging period for the advertising sales industry. And what I, I was learned— I learned how to really be considerate of the employees throughout that whole process, and someone said to me, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. And, you know, change is always going to happen in an organisation, but if you manage it carefully and considerately, I think it can be, you know, it's not a painful thing to go through if it's done well. And then since then, I've worked for a variety of multinational organisations. So, I've worked for Novartis, I moved out to Basel, Switzerland, worked for Novartis for nearly 3 years. Then I came back and I've worked for some of the biggest banks in the world, so HSBC, um, RBS, NatWest. I worked for BP, and then for the last 10 years I've actually been freelancing, so, um, doing, um, largely change communications roles for particularly finance, HR risk functions, going through change. And I love it. I really enjoy it.

Amazing. And we love working with you on these programs. So, it's always nice to partner with you. Tell me why you talked there about big change and going through that in Capital Radio and lots of the other organizations that you've worked in, both as an employee and as an external consultant. What have you found over those years of your career about why it's important to communicate change? I think listeners might think, well, that's a really obvious question. But actually, I don't think people think about it all that often or all that hard.

No, and I think lots of people think communicating change is about issuing communications. And it really is about building trust with the people that are going to be going through the change. And it's about creating belief within that stakeholder group or stakeholders that you're trying to communicate to. Building belief to a level where they buy in to what's happening. They really believe that it's worth doing. So you're answering that big question of why are you doing the change. Um, if done well, change communication aligns people. So in any organisation going through change, people have to all be pulling in the same direction. And without really effective change communications, people are probably not going to do that. They're probably just going to stink to their own swim lane that they've always been in, and they'll probably just carry on doing what they've already been doing. And then if I put my kind of corporate business hat on, it minimises disruption, and it means that the organisation can hopefully carry on the way it has been going. So it's productive, people aren't distracted by the change going on, and then hopefully you'll be able to hit the ground running when the change eventually happens.

And what happens if you don't do all of that? What's the flip side of that coin?

The worst case is resistance and friction. So, and there can be different types of resistance and friction. You can have people who pretend that they're supportive, who are actually detractors, who operate underneath the surface, and they can be very destructive. And that type of friction and resistance can cripple a change program. And then you've got the people who are openly resistant, or, you know, they're willing to profess that they don't believe it's the right thing to do. And I think I find that those people are easier to manage, actually, because at least they're being congruent and open and honest about how they are feeling about it. But it's the people who operate underneath the waterline who you're not quite sure who they are and what they're saying behind the scenes. But if you don't get the change communications right, you probably aren't going to be able to land the change effectively, because the change is normally requiring someone to do something differently, um, act in a different way, or behave in a different way. And what you'll find is that people will just slip back into doing things the way they've always done them. So it just won't happen, or it will happen at a slower pace. And in the economic climate at the moment, organisations can't afford for change to happen too slowly. If change has to happen, it has to happen on time and quickly. Otherwise, it can risk your profitability as a business.

And I guess the challenge is that in the context that we're operating in at the moment, and it is for anybody listening in the future, it is May 2025. Everything's just a bit mental at the moment, isn't it? Globally and economically. So, if we can help our people to get on board with the change, to come with us on the journey, to do that in a friction-free way, so we can get that delivered on time, to budget, and then get going again, then that's good for the organization.

Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

And when I think about that, it's really interesting, because if you think back to that McKinsey stat from 1,000 years ago about 70% of change failing. And actually, there's been loads of studies that says, is it 70 or 50 or 30 or 40? It doesn't really matter. Not every change lands what it is you need it to land. And IBM went on and did a further piece of research in 2014 and 2018 to say, basically, it's all what they called, and I hate this term, soft skills. Because they're not soft, they're bloody hard. But it was all about communicating with staff, having a clear vision, having leader buy-in, having managers on the ground that can translate, all of that good stuff that really helps organizations to land that change in the way that you so well described. So, what does really good change comms look like from your perspective?

I think, um, I've been really kind of considering this and talking about it with clients a lot over the last couple of years. And I think upfront honesty is absolutely critical. And I know it's quite scary for some organisations, but I think over the last 20-odd years, I've seen so many change programmes start with secrecy at the centre or at the top of the organisation. And that rarely leads to a good result in terms of change. So, I think increasingly, I think if you, if you discuss it with the leadership team, and you can really convince them that actually, the best starting point is to get everybody in the organisation talking about the vision of the company. Open, out on the table, and if there are challenges, then be really upfront and open about what those challenges are. I think in the past there's been a danger of infantilizing employees when it comes to change. And I think the future of change is really treating everyone like adults and saying, this is our vision, this is where we're going, these are the opportunities we've got, but these are the challenges. And therefore, as a, as an organization, let's have a conversation about the change that needs to happen. Now, in the past, there would then be, I don't know, maybe a year, 2 years of planning, and maybe working with advisors to figure out what, how to deliver the change. And people are very scared of that period. Leaders seem to think that that period needs to have 100% certainty and everything nailed down, and employees need to know everything. And I think we've got to a place now where people have realised that actually it's okay going through that period of uncertainty, as long as employees are kept in the loop on the journey. So, if I, if I now was in-house working in a change programme, I would say to the leadership team, do a really big piece about the vision, you know, start getting employees talking about it. Really get them to think about the opportunities and challenges, and then pull in a group of employees, and they are the people who are going to work through the change with you. Everyone knows who they are, they're subject matter experts, because what you don't want to do is start on that journey in a— with a vacuum where all the people who will end up using the system or the new way of working They're locked out, and so they don't really know what's going on. Bring them close, or bring a select number of them close. Give— make it their job, you know. If it's 50% of their job, great. If it's 100% of their job, even better. And let everyone know that they are the representatives of the organization in creating this, this future way of working. And then I think it's about a regular drumbeat of communication and being perfectly okay with saying, actually, this isn't going right, we've changed our minds, things have changed for whatever reason, we need to change to a different supplier, we need a different solution, the market's changed, we're now doing something else. I think that's perfectly fine. I think honesty has to happen because too often leaders are in their ivory tower plotting and planning for 2 years. Everyone knows what's going on, but it's unspoken. And it just, you know, as I said at the very beginning, it's all about creating trust and belief, and you can't create trust and belief when everyone knows that the leaders aren't being truly honest about what's coming down the pipeline.

There were two things you said there that really resonated with me, was that infantilizing idea that we treat people like kids, that we don't tell them the truth because we're scared of worrying them, upsetting them. They are telling themselves hundreds or thousands, depending on your organization, of versions of that truth, or not even probably versions of the truth, versions of some half-truth that they heard in the canteen. So, Getting in there and being open and honest as much as possible, for me, is absolutely critical. And that other idea that you mentioned there about a drumbeat of communications, people like certainty and they like to know what they're getting and when they're getting it. So if they're used to getting a weekly update or a monthly update, keep doing it if that's what you've promised. Even if the monthly update is, there's no update, we've got nothing new to tell you. But by the way, here's a story about why we're having to change because of a big challenge, or here's a story about the opportunity this will bring. If there's no update on the programme, there's no update, but at least tell people, so at least we know.

And if you bring in subject matter experts, people from the frontline, get them to share their stories about what they're doing, how are they contributing to this future, and then people will know, well, things are moving, but we need to get to the right solution. And, you know, maybe we're going slower than we thought we were going to be, but I trust my colleagues who are involved in this, and they're going to tell me what's going on.

And in getting those stories from the frontline, what we're doing is other frontliners who may feel closer to those people than a senior leader in the organization are going, "Hey, okay, yeah, that's Katherine telling that story. She's somebody like me, so I can get on board with that. I understand that. That makes complete sense to me." Yeah. Something you alluded to when you were going through that was this, you used different words, but that idea of think, feel, do, or head, heart, and hands. These are maybe of the words that the internal communications people throw around the place. What does that mean to the average punter?

Yeah, I think ultimately the reason why you're communicating to certain stakeholders is you want them to do something differently. So, it may be in the case of maybe it's innovation, you want them to think differently. Maybe you want to do a different process. Maybe you want them to act in a certain way. So, if it's to do with sales or customer experience, Or maybe it's a cultural piece, so you want the behaviours to be different, you know, that you want more collaboration. All of those things will underpin the overall— there may be structural organisational change, system change, technology change, but underneath that, there'll be things that you want people to think, feel, say, and do. Okay.

And does that then help you to form, when you're going through thinking about a change comms plan, Is it those— say, think, feel, do— is it those things that become the objectives then, almost, of that change comms plan?

It really depends on different roles and the different stakeholders you're trying to reach. But essentially, the way I always approach something is to do a really deep stakeholder analysis. So, we'll go from the very top of Exco, work through all the different roles and teams, how they're impacted. And there is normally a short, medium, and long term. So, there may be some teams immediately impacted, others in the longer term. So, by doing that very deep, detailed stakeholder analysis, you will know exactly what you want each team or each role to think, feel, say, and do.

At whatever given point in time, I guess, as well. So, that's not a from here to there. It's on, on as we're going along the journey.

Yeah, and you review it constantly with the program team. But without doing that, really, it's something that it's an easy shortcut to make, to skip over that, or to do really kind of high-level version. But normally at the start of a change program, I probably got, um, maybe about 60 individual— individuals named within the change plan, and then underneath that, different roles and departments and teams. But, you know, you really do want to know, you want to know, are they promoters of the change? Are they detractors? Are they sat on the fence? Are they ambivalent? Are they, you know, secret resistance fighters underneath the surface? And you have to have really honest conversations. I remember once I went into It was when I worked in-house in a bank, and the head of risk came to me and said, you know, the anti-money laundering program just isn't landing. You know, people aren't coming along for training, and we've got targets being, you know, monitored. We've got to hit certain, um, you know, metrics. And I said, right, let's get out the exco leadership team org chart. I said, right, run me through each of these different leaders. And I said, right, tell me all the teams that sit underneath them. And then we tracked it to this, like, a couple of teams who weren't turning up for training. They weren't— they didn't care, essentially. They didn't care. They had other priorities. And we tracked up the reporting line in the matrix to two people Sat on exco, and quite honestly, those people, they were commercial salespeople, and they were mainly focused on their teams delivering revenue, and they weren't prioritizing it. So by doing that very detailed, honest appraisal of all the different stakeholders, we managed to— and then I was like, right, okay, we It's really simple, we just need to isolate those two people and figure out how to influence them. And who do they trust? Who do they believe? Um, it's not enough for the head of risk to go and speak to them. You have to use all the levers possible to influence those people. But essentially, you're not going to deliver change or get the buy-in of stakeholders if you don't do that detailed stakeholder analysis.

Yeah. And the bottom line is those commercial people in that organization, they were objectified and tasked with doing the number. So there's an organizational question perhaps there as well around, well, do we need to objectify our very, very senior leaders in a slightly different way to avoid that happening? I think one of the things that struck me as you were talking was the whole idea that if you're in a very, very big organization and you're doing a stakeholder analysis and you talked there about having kind of 60 individuals, You plainly haven't got time for 10,000 individuals. So, I guess what those individuals could become is kind of archetypes or generalizations for, there are people like this, there are people like this, there are people like this, under which you can kind of group people across an organization, right?

Yeah. So, you can create personas. So, it's quite common within change programs. If you know that there are certain job families or role profiles, you will create a persona because, you know, you can't possibly go into the detail. But say if you were dealing with an operations team, you might have 3 or 4 personas for that operations team. So you might have someone who's an early adopter of technology, for example. You might have somebody who's really nervous of using new technology. And so each of those personas, you can kind of build out a profile of how best to appeal to them, who influences them, what type channels might work for them.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. One group of people I think that get hit really hard during change programs is that— actually, I think they get hit from lots of angles all the time— is that middle management layer. And particularly during change, we need them really, really to be on board to drive the change. So, what would you say is their role? And practically, what can organizations be doing to support them in delivering that role?

Yeah, I, again, I think they're normally the stakeholders who are, um, in a vacuum of knowledge and information. So quite often they're the people who, um, as you work through the different layers of the change, um, stakeholder map, they're the people who are often neglected. So my recommendation is, you know, imagine, as we said earlier, you start off with the vision So you bring the leaders in and the managers, and you have them there together to really look at that vision piece and start looking at the challenges and opportunities. And that's the moment that you create the belief. Whereas I think we've worked on change programs where the leadership team have gone off and done that work on a 3-day away day in, I don't know, Portugal golf club, some country club somewhere, and then they've come back. They've not bothered to tell anybody because it's this massive secret, um, and because of the moving feast that often a change program is, it's always at the very last minute they go, all right, okay, it's time to communicate it now. And managers might find out 2 or 3 days before everyone else. That, that's quite often how it works. But if you bring them in really early and you task them with helping create that future vision, and, and then go away, get— task them to go away and think about what does that mean for our team. And then when you start to bring the employees in, their managers are already there, you know, they believe, they know that this is the, the right direction, and it, it You know, it may be that some of them might say, this isn't for me. And so then you'll, you'll have a natural attrition of people who aren't up for the change. But at least those managers are in really early. But they have to see their role as being the translators of that future vision, that future strategy. They are the people who convert that language that might not mean a lot to everybody into something that's going to be meaningful for the people on the frontline. They will know their people. They will know how to translate it and articulate it in a way that will resonate with them. So, I think bring those managers in as early as possible. And you know what? They will enjoy being part of that process. You know, it goes back to trust. They will feel, I'm trusted, I am valued, I am gonna help build the future of this organisation. And yes, it can be distracting, but that's where you need good quality leaders, where, you know, you're really clear on what the objectives are. Even though this, this change and transformation is going on, you need everybody to be aligned and focused around those objectives for each of the different teams, and, and be really honest and open and say, we can't afford to be distracted by this. 'And that's why certain people are going to be pulled off and focused on it, and there are representatives. But, you know, we're going to keep you up to date with what's going on, but we can't let everybody get involved. You know, we still need to hit our targets.

We still need to perform.' And back to your piece about translation, we don't need local team leaders or managers or supervisors to boil the ocean. We just need them to be able to take something that's written in companyese and translate that into words that their team in risk or HR or branch banking or wherever, call center, that they can understand. And I think it's interesting that some organizations, and we talk to them and we work with them, who think they're doing it already. Oh yes, before we send any communication, this is a real example, before we do any communication with people, we make sure that our our leaders are fully briefed. And then we went and had a chat with some of those leaders and said, oh, really, really good that apparently you're fully briefed before any comms go out to your teams. And they said, well, they send us what they're going to send to people the next day, the day before, but we get nothing more than that. We don't get any insight, background, the reason why. So actually, it's not all that helpful. We could do with just a little bit more to give us a bit more insight so that when If somebody comes and says, "Well, why are we doing this? And what does it mean? And when's it going to happen? And what's the impact on us?" That I have the answers to those questions. Sometimes it's as simple as a Q&A, that's all.

And it's the time for dialogue, where those people can actually ask the leaders, you know, why is this happening? Why is it happening in this way? Why is it being sequenced? Why are we having to wait a year? All of those questions are the questions that are going to be asked on the front line. But you're right, I know what it's like though, when you're in an organization, you have this idea of a big announcement. And so behind the scenes, everyone's trying to get everything perfect for the big announcement that the managers are going to find out, and then the next day employees are going to find out. But by the time that big announcement comes out, most managers will probably have an inkling, will know. Um, so, you know, even if it is a month before and you can get people small face-to-face sessions locally and just be honest and open with them, you know, treat them like adults. They are adults.

They are indeed adults. And about to— I'm going to start using the word infantilizing a lot now because I like that word. Don't be doing, don't be doing infantilizing, listeners. It doesn't make any sense. Let's talk about stories for a second, because if we direct listeners back to, I think it was episode 127, with Dez and Shelley from the Cumberland, that was a project that you and I worked on.

Yes.

How do we create a corporate narrative that helps to align people around the big transformational change that that organization was going through? So, it's well worth a listen. Dez and Shelley are brilliant and really, really good at outlining why story is so important. What role do you believe stories play during change, and what benefit can that have?

I think it's all about relevance and resonance. So the stories, particularly in the Cumberland— so we, we did a lot of listening to employees to really understand what, what did they think the opportunities were and what we thought they thought the challenges were. And those stories and examples, when crafted into little mini stories, can help really connect an employee with what's going on. So if, for example, it's around technology change and they know that they've got 5 systems that are taped together with sticking tape and they don't really communicate, and if one falls over, they all fall over, and they have to log out— you know, only 3 people in the company can log into one, a system at the same time. And we know, we've all been there, and it's a nightmare. But these organizations, if you, if you tell those stories and say, you know, remember, you know, we've got assistant systems that don't speak to each other, and, you know, we need to be able to have a system that can do X, Y, and Z, and then those little stories help bring it to life where people go, oh yeah, I know, I've got a real pain point there. That's, that's, that's slowing me down and doing my job.

I—

that resonates with me. And therefore, waiting 2 years for a new system, yes, it's a pain, but I know it's better than not going through this and not having that best— being in that better place. So I think resonance and relevance, um, every single story is going to have— well, We choose the stories because they're going to have a pretty much universal resonance with the people that we're trying to appeal to. They will see themselves in those stories, and I think that's really important.

Yeah, yeah. It's that idea of heart over head, I guess, isn't it? That, you know, a big change comms strategy document is going to be talking to regulators and the board and the senior leadership team and all those kind of people. But actually, As I've said to a few people, I think that big strategy change comms plans are a bit like HR policies. We know they're required, but we hope to God we never actually have to read one. Apologies to any listeners who write HR policies. We love you too. But point being, they're just not written for the average employee, whereas a corporate story, I think, is more so and helps to, as you said earlier on, helps to align people around the change and hopefully get you through that old Kubler-Ross change curve as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Yeah, and if, you know, I keep going back to that vision piece, but, um, with, with organizations like the Cumberland, to, to paint that vision and to explain to everyone what the future will look and feel like for them as an organization, those individuals will be able to see that and, and, you know, um, visualize that, that future and It may also talk about what it's going to mean for the customers or the clients of that organisation as well. It may also talk about what, what will the impact will be on society at large. And so people can get really— well, they can either get excited about it or they can say, that's not for me. And that's just as important for people to go, that's not the type of organisation I want to work for, you know. I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, whatever that is, and therefore I'm, I'm going to exit the organization. And that's fine as well. But I think if people can see themselves within the story and envisage what it's going to mean for them, and it hopefully it will excite them and make them think, I want to be, I want to be part of creating that. And that's, that's critical, I think.

I completely agree. And one of the things that you brought up earlier on in terms of helping people to see themselves in that new world, that new context, was that idea of making sure that you had people from the frontline involved in the project from very early on. And often organizations will go down this route of, okay, where are the influencers? Who are the people out there, the leaders, the people, they don't necessarily have epaulettes or hierarchy, but they're the ones out there who can help us to kind of influence people through the organization. Often, we might call them change agents, we might call them change champions, they might be called comms champions. Why are they so important?

I think you need to have your finger on the pulse of what people are thinking and feeling within the organization. And there are going to be formal or informal networks that you need to access for any change transformation program. The formal ones are the ones that you— they may already exist. So a lot of the networks I use at the moment are, um, some of the special interest groups. So there may be diversity and inclusion group, or it may be the menopause group, or it may be, um, a particular charity, um, like a social responsibility group that they've got, or sustainability group. So those are the kind of existing ones that already exist. Um, then there are the informal ones. So, uh, if I'm doing any transformation program, I normally go straight to the PA's network, whether they're an official network or not, because I know that at some point those people are going to be critical to the success or failure of the organization's change program. Um, they will know exactly what's going on, how people are thinking and feeling. And I know they're going to be honest. They will be really honest about that. And I think honesty, as I keep saying, is critical. Then you can do— you can have specific change influencer networks who they may be self-nominated or nominated by managers and leaders. I prefer self-nominated ones myself. And those are the people who genuinely want to, um, get closer to the, um, project, and they have a special interest or a passion for it. And I think sometimes leaders or managers, when they choose people as, uh, to be part of the network, they normally pick the same people. So it's normally high performers and people who are are, um, early adopters. And sometimes you don't, you don't want those, just those types of people. You want people who, you know, I think we've talked about, you need, you need a bit of a grit in the oyster to make the pearl. So you need the people who are actually going to be a little bit abrasive and a bit cynical, you know, the people who are going to say, well, we've tried this before and it's failed., and you need to get them on board. And I find that having those people in a network, um, whether it's formal or informal, is really critical because again, you get the honesty and they're likely to raise things that are going to be, um, relevant in the future at some point.

And those big challenges, and I think probably for listeners there, that probably feels You know, get some detractors on your change comms group. What? But actually, you're spot on. I love that analogy of the grit in the oyster to make the pearl. And just that idea that, you know, if everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid on the change comms team, then you're not getting a rounded view of what the organization— or sorry, not what, where the organization is and what the kind of mood music is in totality. You're only hearing one side of that, and that's not helpful. You have to be, I guess, fully appraised Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. That's exactly what you want. You want to know where the pockets of resistance are. You want to know if there are certain managers who are causing that, you know, the resistance fighter in certain departments. You need to find out where they are and think about how you're going to manage them.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Unfortunately, you and I could talk about this stuff all week, I know, but unfortunately, we've come to time for this episode. I've got one last question to ask you. I think I know what the answer is going to be already, because you've said it about 30 times. What's the one thing that organizations really need to focus on when they're communicating change?

Being honest. Being honest and open. And it feels alien to some leadership teams to do that, because it's not what has happened in the past. But treat your employees like adults and don't infantilize them.

Love it. Catherine, thank you so much for being here. Really enjoyed the conversation as usual.

It's a pleasure.

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