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Is a management of change programme the same as a communication programme?
Part of the problem of change management programmes is that they focus too much of the 'learning', 'communicating' and 'engaging' without having specific plans on how to do it - other than massive communication programmes that intend to touch every corner of the organisation. The model is flawed. There is no change unless the change is behavioural. Behaviours can't be taught or communicated in the traditional way. Behaviours travel and spread via imitation and social copying. Also, only a small percentage of people in the organisation have the influence to spread those behaviours - and they are not in senior management. The traditional academic and consulting model is linear: big change needs big set of initiatives cascaded down to all via big communication programme, with emphasis on a naïve rational appeal ('B is better than A, we should go for A') and vague conceptual black boxes such as 'employee engagement'. We have developed and implemented many times a completely different model called Viral Change". In this model, a small set of behaviours spread by a small number of people through their networks of influence and properly reinforced create massive behavioural tipping points with new routines and 'cultures' appearing and becoming stable. Change for us is to create an internal infection of ( here whatever the object of the change may be) and making success ( in whatever operational definitions have bee agreed) fashionable. The change may have to do more with fashions and infections than rational presentation of objectives and rational persuasion is hard to swallow when people have spent their lives supporting and trying to implement mechanistic top-down so called change programmes.
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