When Change is Coming

March 5, 2014

A friend recently shared these emails with me. Two people on his team sent them at around the same time about the same topic.

This one came out first and produced a lot of anger and disgruntled comments.

Hello!

The Mt. Fuji conference room has been reassigned as storage. You can no longer schedule meetings there. Change any meetings you’ve already booked in that room.

Thank you, Ms. X

This came out second and calmed things down.

Hi all,

As we’ve grown, we’ve acquired a lot of material – created by us and purchased from others. To keep it from overflowing into our workspace we need to use the Mt. Fuji conference room for storage.

Fortunately, we still have 5 conference rooms, so we won’t be short of meeting/collaboration space. Within the next month, we’ll set up one of the smaller conference rooms for video conferencing since we lose this functionality by converting Mt. Fuji.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I hope you’ll let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Kind regards, Mr. Y

I was struck by how Ms. X missed the mark and how skillfully Mr. Y included the key elements of change management:

Explain the context (“the why”)
Focus on what will stay the same
Acknowledge the inconvenience
Include a plan for alleviating the inconvenience
Encourage dialogue

While conference rooms are a minor matter in the grand scheme of things, they’re essential to the daily lives of folks on this small team. Losing one is a change for them.

And change isn’t easy! In the past 20 years of working with organizations, I’ve seen too many managers forget this. So the next time you’re making a change, remember these simple change management steps – they’ll help you avoid unnecessary drama.