Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!
Fit4Change were engaged by an IT consultancy to develop and deliver the communication programme for their media sector client that was embarking on a complicated joint venture
The original plan of change and systems implementation developed and managed by the IT consultancy had neglected the need for communication and it was necessary to develop a ‘rapid action’ communication plan to bring staff and management up to speed on the programme and increase their involvement in the change activities
The rapid action plan included:
- Review of the quality and quantity of all existing communications
- Development of an impact plan on the business to identify where the need for communication was highest
- Development of a stakeholder map to identify where one-to-one communications were required
- Facilitation of a number of informal ‘coffee beak’ updates for affected areas of the business
- Creation of a set of templates for the project teams to capture information about their project in a consistent manner across all parts of the project
- Creation of a roadmap for the project so that all project managers were clear about project dependencies
Within a short period of time;
- The project team were up to speed on the interdependencies of the programme and project team communications improved
- Staff became much more aware and motivated about the programme
- The majority of staff attended a road show briefing which included demonstrations of the new systems where they were able to ask questions about the new applications
- Directors became far more confident about the success of the new implementations