Communication During Change

In Module 1 we said poor communication is one of the great change killers. This module is about doing it well. And the first thing to accept is uncomfortable: communication is not what you send, it is what people receive. You can write a flawless announcement and still communicate nothing, because the people who needed it were busy, skimming, or quietly assuming it didn’t apply to them. Good change communication is engineered around how humans actually take in information, not around how tidy your message looks.

Start with the audience, not the message

Different people need different things from the same change. Senior leaders want to know the strategy and the risk. Middle managers want to know what to tell their teams and how it affects their numbers. Frontline staff want to know what changes about their daily work, and whether they’ll look incompetent for a while. If you broadcast one identical message to all three, you will over-explain to some and under-explain to others, and most people will tune out.

So before writing anything, ask who your audiences are and what each one is actually worried about. The strategy that thrills an executive means nothing to someone whose real question is “do I still log my hours the same way?” Map the audiences first; write second.

Answer “what’s in it for me”

Every person hit by a change runs a private calculation, usually summarised as WIIFM — what’s in it for me? If your communication doesn’t answer it, people fill the silence with their worst guess, which is usually “this is bad for me.” You don’t have to pretend a change is pure upside. You do have to be specific about how it lands for each group: less double entry, fewer late-night escalations, a skill that’s good for their CV. Vague corporate benefits (“synergies,” “efficiencies”) are not WIIFM — they’re what’s in it for the company. People can tell the difference instantly.

Repetition and channels

Here is a number leaders find annoying: people need to hear an important message many times, through several channels, before it sticks. The first email is not the message — it is the first of many. A change announcement should live in the all-hands, the team meeting, the manager’s one-to-one, the chat channel, and the email, because different people pay attention in different places, and because repetition is how a message moves from “I saw that” to “this is happening.” If you feel like you’re repeating yourself to the point of embarrassment, you’re probably about halfway there.

Just as important: match the channel to the moment. Big, emotional news deserves a human voice — a meeting where people can react and ask — not a buried paragraph in a newsletter. Routine updates can live in writing. Sending hard news by cold email is how you turn manageable worry into resentment.

Honesty about the unknown

The instinct under pressure is to project total confidence and paper over the gaps. Don’t. Say what you know, say what you don’t yet know, and say when you’ll know more. “We haven’t decided team structures yet; we expect to by March, and you’ll hear it from your manager first” builds far more trust than a confident silence that everyone correctly reads as hiding something. People can handle uncertainty. What they can’t handle is being managed.

Rule of thumb: if you think you’ve communicated a change enough times, you’re roughly halfway there. Repeat it, vary the channel, and always name what’s still unknown.

Spot it: what’s wrong with this message?

Read each situation and decide for yourself, then tap a card to flip it and check your answer.

Sort the scenarios

Drag each item into the bucket it belongs to — or tap an item, then tap a bucket. Hit Check placement when you’re done.

How to use it

Before you send any change message, ask three questions: who is this really for, what’s in it for them, and have they heard it before? Useful phrases: “Let me give the version that matters for your team.” “Here’s what’s in it for you specifically.” “I don’t know that yet, but here’s when I will.” If a colleague drops big news in a one-line email, you can helpfully push back: “This feels like a conversation, not an email — can we talk it through?” Communicating change well is mostly empathy plus repetition. Master those two and you’ll outperform people with far fancier comms plans.