From the March 2007 issue of Management Consulting News magazine.
In a recent address to the Association of Management Consulting Firms, Ray Kotcher, CEO of Ketchum, offered the audience five lessons to help improve communications in times of turbulent change.
Kotcher points out that even though consultants are often agents of change, that doesn’t make them immune to the uncertainties and fear of change they can experience when their own organizations undergo transformation.
Here are Kotcher’s Five Lessons for Communicating Change:
Recognize that change is the ticket to your success. Ask yourself if you and your firm's colleagues are truly behaving as a team. Is collaboration a given? Is everyone ready to tackle the latest period of change with a unified spirit? It pays rich rewards to emphasize collaboration, community, and credibility – and to ensure that this spirit is embraced by your employees, your clients, and others.
Embrace the growth and change within your consultancies. Quickly communicate what any new change means to the entire organization. Many firms are changing rapidly by executing new business strategies, leveraging new technologies, and bringing in new talent.
Understand what the forces of change and growth mean to your organization and its future. What are your goals about your firm and what's ahead? Does everyone in your organization understand them?
Think creatively about how you will communicate to your internal community about growth and change. Employees must be engaged in the programs you devise for dealing with growth and change. They must be ambassadors for it. They must be actively involved in helping develop and cheerlead for the programs. This means they must understand your objectives and initiatives and actively buy into them.
Join the conversation and be ready yourself to faces the challenges – good and bad – of tomorrow. You and your firm's colleagues have your own conversation, but join others and don't be isolated within your particular firm. Broaden your world to make a difference. As Gandhi said, "You must be the change you want to see in the world."
Raymond L. Kotcher is Chief Executive Officer and a Senior Partner of Ketchum, a unit of Omnicom Group and one of the world’s largest public relations agencies, with offices and affiliates in six continents.
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