Managing the pace of change impacting business starts with you

Productive two-way communication takes teams from fear to flourishing

By Bridget Krage O’Connor, CEO and Founder of O’Connor Connective and Melissa Borowicz, CEO and Owner of The Utech Group

Originally published in The NEW Business Review: Harnessing Change, Nov./Oct./Dec. 2024 edition and reprinted with permission.


As a Wisconsin leader, you know the waves of change aren’t calming any time soon.

You and your organization need to navigate these waters quickly to stay ahead.

Melissa Borowicz, CEO of The Utech Group, and Bridget O’Connor, CEO of O’Connor Connective, collaborate regularly to assist leaders going through change.

The following offers their perspectives on the importance of communication during transitions to align and engage teams.

By Bridget Krage O’Connor

How do you look for your next business partner?

I asked that question to my early-career boss who was about to lead his company into a merger.

“Well,” he said, “I look for a psychographic mate.”

“A what?” I asked.

And he turned back and answered as though it were obvious and said, “If I ended up in a canoe with them, and we were lost, we’d navigate our way out.”

And with that, I became obsessed with observing how leaders make decisions and how they manage the deep waters of organizational change.

I also happened to be in the right place to do it.

Those would-be canoe mates of mine were about to work collectively to bring together two companies that operated in three separate offices.

One in Minneapolis, where I worked – the other two in Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Phrases like “we will become one office with long corridors” and “we will have cross-office teams” became a part of our cultural nomenclature.

Video conferencing systems were installed ahead of their time (considering this was in the mid-1990s, we were zooming before Zoom was a thing).

Plus, every member of the southern offices flew to Minneapolis to join together for celebrations and team building that included both formal and plenty of informal fun.

Fast forward to today and that company now has hundreds of employees in seven locations. Those in the canoe have changed, but the vision remains.

This experience, that company, sticks with me today.

The lessons learned and the intrigue in leveraging intentional communication during organizational change sparked something deep within me.

It drove me to pursue a master’s degree, integrating these concepts and, ultimately, resulted in the launch of a company – O’Connor Connective – with a specialty in aligning strategic communications and marketing for organizations in transition.

Our work today includes all of the communications and branding leaders require during mergers, acquisitions or significant changes.

But what we don’t do is what I’ve learned is critical for our clients’ success.

We can’t create lasting behavioral change without intentional change management techniques.

And that’s when I call my friend Melissa Borowicz, owner of The Utech Group, and we approach things together.

By Melissa Borowicz

After years of resistance, I made my own change decision.

I came home to join the family business.

The primary driver?

A desire to impact positive change in the lives of people and organizations.

Little did I know how much I would learn about the power that consistent, transparent communication, organizational alignment and connection play in successfully implementing change.

I have had the opportunity to work with countless leaders and organizations that are going through change, typically as a result of growth.

Our approach is to start with a combination of leadership alignment at the top and organizational involvement in change initiatives at all levels and across all functions of an organization.

Both are critical for change to be successful and long-lasting.

Employees need to understand the vision and see leadership reinforce the vision.

Leadership needs employee feedback and involvement in making the vision become a reality.

It takes engagement at all levels for organizations to succeed at change.

Getting everyone on the same page can be easier said than done.

It is often not about the lack of communication but rather how that communication is aligned that makes the difference.

Years ago, I worked with a successful, multi-generational family business that was facing a significant leadership transition.

The board brought me in because there was so much internal competition that they couldn’t distill fact from fiction.

Without leadership alignment, employees became loyal to their leader and internal gossip was the primary mode of communication.

Our focus was alignment at the leadership level.

They got honest with each other and barriers started to break down.

As they aligned, they identified employee influencers and invited them to join a few leaders in the creation of a Culture Team.

This team was tasked with implementing the values to create alignment across the organization.

In one of our early meetings, alerts came in that a significant winter storm was approaching.

Leaders decided they were going to shut down the plant due to the weather.

What happened next was fascinating.

In wondering how best to communicate to get the message out, a team member left and shared the message with an influential production employee.

The message spread throughout the plant within five minutes.

In this plant, communication and the pace of getting the word out weren’t the issues.

The channels and speed of communication worked well.

They now needed to find ways to use this existing norm, properly.

Recognizing the speed of communication, leadership became intentional about turning the gossip into positive communication to highlight progress.

They reinforced change by highlighting the values in action, were transparent about the state of the business, shared opportunities for development and growth and celebrated milestones. Years later, the organization has expanded and more than doubled in revenue.

Aligned communication and engagement at all levels was their key to leveraging change for success.

By Bridget Krage O’Connor and Melissa Borowicz

So, why is change so hard?

We haven’t found a shortage of ideas about how things need to change.

Even within highly esteemed organizations, the top complaints that arise from employees are:

  • Lack of communication
  • Unclear vision
  • Misaligned leadership

According to McKinsey, 70% of change initiatives fail, primarily due to a lack of leadership commitment and clear vision.

The antidote?

Nearly 66% of leaders say that clear, transparent communication at all levels reduces resistance and helps create buy-in.

Without buy-in and alignment from senior leadership, it is nearly impossible to communicate a clear, consistent vision.

Employees then focus on the inconsistencies in leadership behaviors and the mixed messages that are conveyed.

When what leaders say and what they do doesn’t match, it creates confusion and uncertainty.

Change is already difficult.

When there isn’t consistent, clear communication from leadership, any person’s natural reaction is to fill in the blanks and create their own narrative.

A normal response to change is fear and to question how the change will impact me.

When leaders are on the same page and communicate consistently, it creates a sense of security and stability.

Think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

If basic needs are being met – in this case, clarity in direction and security that comes through consistent communication – then employees have the mental and emotional capacity to contribute their time and energy toward how to implement change and focus on their contributions to the organization’s future.

You need not change alone.

We frequently find that leaders want to figure out and perfect the change first before communicating with their teams.

However, this quest for perfection before communication can backfire.

Though leaders do need to be aligned around the vision and the direction, they generally benefit by being vulnerable and transparent in what they need help with.

Our suggestion when managing change includes involving others in the process.

Don’t try to go it alone.

Instead, connect with people.

Help your employees see themselves in the vision by empowering them to contribute to implementing change.

It’s usually the people closest to the action who have solutions for how to best make things work.

Tap into that knowledge and the potential is limitless.

Today’s change requires a new set of skills from leaders.

Forbes Councils Member Aliasgar Dohadwala recently highlighted the role of leadership in successful business transformation, citing an ideal combination is setting a clear vision, communicating transparently to motivate and engage employees, commitment to the long-term and connecting at a personal level.

After all, we are human first.

Times, they are a changing

As Zach Beauchamp shared in a recent Vox article, this election season saw many countries choosing the change candidate.

Three different exit polls found that at least 70% of Americans were dissatisfied with the country’s current direction, and they took it out on the current ruling party.

We saw this anti-incumbent wave in elections in the United Kingdom, Botswana, India, North Macedonia, South Korea and South Africa.

It continued a global trend begun the previous year when voters in Poland and Argentina opted to move on from the current leadership.

The handful of 2024 exceptions to this general rule look like true outliers: The incumbent party’s victory in Mexico, for example, came after 20 straight defeats for incumbents across Latin America.

Choosing change often comes when we are looking for something better or different – a chance to be, in short, safe.

But at the same time, most of us say we don’t like change when it is happening to us – especially in the workplace.

Gartner 2023 data gives us a snapshot into the psyche of employees and their resistance to change initiatives at work, and it mostly boils down to uncertainty and a lack of trust.

In fact, the data states that more than 70% of organizational change initiatives fail because:

  • 41% of employees mistrust the organization
  • 39% have a lack of awareness around the reason for the change
  • 38% fear the unknown
  • 23% feel excluded from change-related decisions

What if we could flip these numbers by focusing on trust-building and certainty?

Well, we are here to tell you, you can.

And that silver bullet lies in this word: communication.

What you say and how you listen – these matter.

Certainly, developing and delivering key messages during change initiatives are critical.

But so is listening to where your employees are at, as their suggestions can help ensure success during transitions.

Gone are the days of top-down directives.

Employees deserve and expect participation in change processes.

They want to be involved.

And when involved, they are more likely to successfully implement what’s needed.

We love these stats because they underscore our philosophy that impactful communication is two-way.

Results-generating communication isn’t top-down alone:

  • With top-down “tell” strategies, the CEB Corporate Leadership Council reports that only 20% of the workforce understands the change they face. On the other hand, with open-source talk communication, 54% of the workforce understands the change.
  • According to the council, with communication during change 35% express hope, and 59% express pride.

Is Wisconsin bracing for or welcoming change?

As organizational leaders, we must read the tea leaves.

What’s happening around us signals big changes.

Whether it is demographic shifts, rapid technological advancements including AI or generational swings with vastly different world views, we are in it.

Change is a constant we can count on.

But how we respond and how we collaborate and communicate with our colleagues at all levels of our organizations will help team members feel more secure and will, in turn, help us weather those changes.

Getting it right

If we remember nothing else while facing turbulent waves of change, we must recognize that we all long to feel safe.

Most of us feel safe when we have a say or feel we have some control or participation in what’s happening to us.

As a leader, you have the power to invite your team members in through your intentional communication.

For we can row in the same direction, but only if we have a seat in the canoe.aking an impact and building things that are bigger than themselves. Maybe it’s in the water. 

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