Communicating for Organizational Change

Every organization I know has said, at one time or another, that it had a communication problem. Lack of productivity, lack of efficiency, failure to meet budget requirements, failure to meet market demands, delivery of products to customers that are out-of-the-box failures, and a whole host of departmental, team and interpersonal issues are all attributed to a “communication problem.” No doubt there is some truth to this attribution, but what does it really mean when we say that we have a communication problem?

The following scenario is adapted from Chapter Four of Communication in High Performance
Organizations: Principles and Best Practices, a Kindle e-book. The book presents fictional situations that exemplify common communication problems in organizations and offers proven solutions to those problems.

The scenario in Chapter Four is about communication related to organizational change. Communicating a change that will affect everyone in an organization can be very challenging. Often decisions are made with too little information and from only a narrow, biased segment of the organization. More needs to be done to receive input from a range of voices before major changes are implemented. Often a broader understanding of who needs what and why, results in better decisions.

In the scenario, the IT department of a large diversified organization, BFG Automotive, is responsible for maintaining all computers in the company. The department had started receiving complaints from employees because BFG had not adopted the most recent Windows operating system and some of the files they received from vendors were difficult to open. In response to these complaints, the department decided to explore updating the operating system sooner than they had originally planned. 

Jane Washington, the new Manager of IT in BFG, circulated a memo in her department explaining that user complaints had raised the possibility that the transition to the new operating system may need to be moved up in the schedule. 

What should Jane do next? How could she communicate with the organization in a way that would facilitate a successful transition to an updated operating system? In what ways is this scenario similar to your organization?