But we communicated it to people

“I didn’t know this was happening.”

Forty-seven messages. And people still didn’t feel informed.

 

“We told them everything. We did the maximum.”

Over six months, we sent 47 separate communication items – newsletters, town hall recordings, videos from the director, plenty of emails.”

Everything was prepared.

Everything was sent.

Everything went according to plan.

 

“I didn’t know this affected me.”

That statement did not come at the beginning.

It came late.

Nine months after implementation, adoption was at 31 percent. Management could not understand it.

 

“This is the maximum we could have done.”

No.

This was the maximum you could have broadcast.

Because the problem here was not signal strength.

The signal was strong.

The problem was reception.

 

A signal that is too strong turns into noise.

And noise is something the brain automatically ignores.

Not out of resistance.

Not out of indifference.

It is a survival mechanism.

 

And that is the lie companies keep repeating to themselves again and again:

“If we communicated it a lot, we communicated it well.”

You didn’t.

You communicated it often.

That is something entirely different.

 

In week seven of the transformation, employees received three separate emails about the new system in a single day.

Each from a different sender.

Each with a different emphasis.

Each marked as important.

 

By week fourteen, most of them could visually recognise the transformation newsletter header – and closed it before even opening it.

 

Forty-seven items did not create awareness.

They created an escape reflex.

After every town hall, after every GMs video, employees could quote the transformation strategy.

They knew the company was “going digital.”

They knew the platform would bring “efficiency and transparency.”

 

But no one could answer these three ordinary questions:

• What exactly will change in my working day?
• What should I stop doing?
• And what happens if the new process fails on a Tuesday afternoon when orders are coming in, production is behind, and the customer is waiting?

 

That is not a lack of information.

That is a lack of translation.

The organisation had an excellent communication plan.

But it forgot how to ensure understanding of the impact and a mindset shift.

And so a gap opened between information and understanding.

A gap into which 69% of users fell.

 

Employees do not understand the meaning of change through a corporate newsletter – especially one they have already learned to ignore.

They understand it through familiar faces: their direct managers or colleagues.

Through questions asked in a close and familiar environment.

Through someone who can say: “For our team, this specifically means this…”

 

Prosci’s research is very clear on this point:

Employees prefer to hear messages about the personal impact of change from their direct manager – not from HR, not from a communications team sitting somewhere at headquarters But from the person standing with them every Monday morning in the team meeting.

 

This company sent 47 messages through central channels.

• It did not use the power of ambassadors.
• It did not prepare managers for anything.
• Managers and close colleagues could not answer those three basic questions – because no one asked them to. No one helped them translate the strategy into the language of their team. No one distinguished what a sales representative needs to hear, what a warehouse worker needs to hear, and what a regional director needs to hear.

 

Sending the same message content to everyone is not communication.

 

William Bridges separated two things that organisations still keep confusing:

Change = the external event.

Transition = the internal psychological process.

 

Companies manage the change. They leave the transition to chance.

You can send people 47 accurate pieces of information about a change and still leave them completely alone in the process shifting their minds.

 A mindset shift does not happen on the intranet.

It happens in an employee’s head on Monday morning when they open the new system and do not know what to do if it does not work.

At that moment, the GMs video does not help.

Neither does the newsletter they have trained themselves to stop reading.

 

What helps is a manager or a change ambassador who has already gone through it with them.

Or no one helps.

And adoption stays at 31 percent.

 

People were informed.

They were not prepared.

 

A strong signal ≠ change adoption

 

How is it in your organisation?

What other ways does your organisation use when introducing change?