Managing Change As It Happens

Managing Change as It Happens How Regular Polling Can Support Communication of Change By Tudor Williams, ABC and Ryan Williams From IABC Online Newsletter “CW Online, August 2003 You can't wait for the employee survey each year to see if you're making improvements in your change communication - you need to measure now. Tudor Williams, ABC, outlines the critical factors in ensuring your polls are accurate, usable and result in valid sets of data. Every organization needs its pulse taken regularly and employee polling is one quick and cost-effective way of doing it. I like to think it is as the business of "organizational healthcare" - using diagnostics to bring about a state of organizational wellness. Polling is one of a variety of diagnostic tools that include full audits and annual checkup surveys. Audits and checkups are planning and evaluation tools. Polls are implementation tools. They tell you what is changing and by how much. Polls are the pulse takers that give snapshots of perceptions. They describe how people are coping with change, what they are thinking, how they are feeling and the extent to which they are supportive of organizational goals. Avoiding common pitfalls Bad polling reinforces the adage "junk in, junk out" - if your methodology is faulty, your data will be useless. One currently popular example is the web site "poll" tool. These are "toy polls" intended for entertainment and curiosity, not scientific research. You have no control over the sample and no way to track them. A good poll, however, is short, sharply focused on a few key issues you really need to track and is conducted with a random, representative sample of the people involved in the issues. Online technology provides inexpensive, quick tools to collect the data in ways that are reliable, secure and respect the privacy of your audience. Case Study 1: Caring for members opinions The Alberta Medical Association (AMA) has about 7000 members comprising physicians, medical residents and students who depend upon the Association to represent them on health care, medical, political and economic issues of the day. In recent years, the Association has had to deal with major changes in Canada's government-run healthcare system. The public's expectations are changing of the system, and of the role of physicians.

The AMA recently introduced pulse-taking polls to track member opinions of these issues. The 2002 benchmark satisfaction survey identified issues considered critical to the AMA's strategic priorities for the coming year. They included regionalization of healthcare, the role of physicians, the doctor-patient relationship and compensation. A bi-monthly online poll to 1000 members is now exploring these issues throughout 2003. One of the key issues, for example, is that of primary healthcare renewal - providing healthcare through teams of healthcare professionals rather than the traditional physician office. Communication strategies are in place to build member understanding and support for the Association's plans for renewal. Ronald Kustra, ABC, the AMA's assistant executive director says, "The poll is now tracking the impacts of these strategies on physicians' awareness of the changes, how they feel about them in terms of the standard of care and their role, and their views on the AMA's proposals." So what makes the AMA's approach sound research? Good polls play off baseline data, anchor points with which comparisons can be made. They use small but valid representative samples of the target audience. They are focused on a few key issues. Each poll gives you a baseline for the next - it's the second, third and subsequent polls that provide the real value, enabling comparisons and analysis of cause and effect.

Case Study 2: The vagaries of employee support This is a good news, bad news story. The good news - the polls showed things going wrong. The bad news - management ignored the message. Three years ago, an international energy company proposed a merger with a smaller partner that would impact about one third of the work force and lead to major changes. It was, by no means, a "fait accompli.". To move ahead, the future partners had to secure the support of key stakeholders. Employee support for the proposal, in particular, was considered critical. A series of online employee polls, in three languages, measured the pulse of the organization immediately after the initial announcements, and then bi-weekly for six months as the merger plans proceeded to final decision. Understanding the job impacts of the merger began low but steadily increased with more communication (see Figure 1). In month four, leadership communication disappeared, the grapevine went rampant - and the poll reflected it with a sudden dip into uncertainty. This was recovered by reassurances from the senior management team in month five and six. A round of meetings to announce the merger brought initial excitement (see Figure 2). But enthusiasm declined with inconsistent face-to-face communication from senior management. These champions for change rarely made an appearance - three times in all. Each time excitement soared upwards again but only temporarily. Questions to measure effectiveness of information sources showed supervisors and managers started out well respected, but, as they were starved of information, their effectiveness declined (see Figure 3). The biggest downturn was in the employees sessions held by the leadership team. After early success these declined in frequency and effectiveness. E-mail remained the number one source of information Despite these figures being reported every two weeks, the leadership team only appeared twice at employee meetings after the initial announcements. Employee confidence in the merger quickly declined and skepticism crept in. This was a contributing factor to the loss of confidence in and cancellation of the plan. Polling for change The lesson that polling can be a dynamic tool in tracking change is clear. In an era when crisis, reputation and issues management dominate our priorities, we need measures to tell us, objectively, what our organization's state of health is really like on a regular basis. These issues develop fast - altering at the whim of any number of developments. Regularly tracking the few issues that are critical to change, with targeted questions and representative samples, gives you the leverage to demand, in these cases, more time to communicate and more open communication. Tudor Williams and Ryan Williams are principals of twisurveys Inc. a research firm specializing in communication and satisfaction measurement.