Picture that impossibly big dinosaur with a neck so long that its head has to call a different time zone to talk to its tail.
As it moves, the head of this creature engages with everything from predators to food to weather far sooner than the rest of its body. Metaphorically speaking, the head is aware of change, and is processing information and weighing consequences related to a response, long before the rest of the body has a clue.
Metaphorically speaking, as the “head” of your business, so are you. You know sooner than your employees do when something outside the company – regulation, the economy , competition, technology, customer buying habits – demands a change to the way you do business. That means you have two things your employees don’t have – a head start on processing the ramifications and the power to do something about it.
When communicating with employees about business change, it’s easy to forget that they have had neither your vantage point, nor the time you have had to think about the implications. Suspended on that long neck, you’ve “traveled” miles, looking at things from high and low, from multiple angles. But the view is pretty different from the legs and tail!
If you can start the change conversation where your employees are, rather than from where you are, and be patient enough to let them process the implications, the respect and restraint you show will be repaid with a better outcome.
+ with apologies to Stephen Jay Gould!
Tags: employee communication, Employees