Olivia Bilyk – Senior Change Consultant Every organization has a grapevine, and during change, it tends to become more active.
No matter the scale or complexity of the change, people will naturally try to make sense of what they see and hear. They’ll connect the dots and fill in the blanks where information is missing. So, the more ambiguity that exists, the more unruly the grapevine can grow.
Traditional change management approaches focus on managing the grapevine through addressing early rumors, equipping leaders with shared talking points, and reinforcing key messages throughout the journey. While these actions matter, leaders can prevent the grapevine from growing wild by intentionally building alignment and clarity well before the change is launched.
Building alignment requires bringing the right stakeholders into the conversation about what needs to change and why, working through different perspectives, and reaching decisions about how the organization will communicate and implement the change in a way that people understand and are motivated to support.
Clarity stems from that alignment. When key stakeholders are on the same page about what’s changing, why it matters, and how the organization will move forward, they can clearly and consistently communicate the change and ultimately help the rest of the organization make sense of it.
Here are five best practices for achieving alignment and clarity before the change is underway:
Since organizational change typically impacts multiple functions and business units, cross-functional stakeholders are critical for helping change leaders understand what actually needs to change and why, and how those changes will impact different parts of the business.
No one leader will have a comprehensive understanding of customer implications, operational constraints, how roles and ways of working should shift, and the technology, processes, and structures that will make the future state possible. That’s why it’s critical to identify which perspectives are necessary for shaping the change, and engage those voices early to surface dependencies, tensions, and implications while there’s still time to proactively plan for them.
Bottom line: By bringing a diverse group of key stakeholders together to surface implications early, leaders can make smarter decisions about how the change will impact the full organizational system, rather than just a few parts.
Even if leaders agree with the direction the organization needs to go, they may hold different views of how the organization should get there. This misalignment might not become visible until after the change is underway and teams begin to make decisions or work in conflicting ways.
To help leaders and key stakeholders align on the “how” before the change is underway, empower them to help shape the path forward. Create space for them to challenge assumptions, name tradeoffs, raise concerns, and influence the direction as it evolves in real time. Ask them: What decisions are we aligned on? Where do we still see things differently? What will the change journey require from our respective teams?
Bottom line: Invite leaders and key stakeholders to contribute and reach enough shared understanding and ownership around decisions that will enable the organization to move forward together.
Once leaders and key stakeholders are aligned, the rest of the organization needs to be brought up to speed. To help people understand the upcoming change, equip leaders with a coherent story they can use to build clarity around:
Answering these questions with specificity forces the organization to have important conversations. And if leaders come up with different answers when crafting a unified change story, that’s a sign that greater alignment needs to be established first.
Bottom line: Creating clarity for the broader organization requires equipping the people who will be leading the change with a story that makes the what, why, and how clear for others.
Before rolling out the change story to the broader organization, test whether it holds up beyond the core team responsible for leading the change.
Ask stakeholders who weren’t part of earlier alignment conversations what the story surfaces for them: What feels clear? What questions remain? What feelings or assumptions does it provoke? Where could the message be interpreted differently than intended?
How they respond will provide insight into the effectiveness of the change story and what gaps might still exist.
Bottom line: By using stakeholder reactions as data, leaders can get a stronger sense for whether the what, why, and how need to be clearer before the organization is asked to act.
Not every stakeholder needs to hear the change story in the same way. It’s the leader’s job to translate the story into what it means for their team’s ways of working, decision-making, and expectations.
To effectively cascade the change story across teams, leaders not only need a common foundation of core messages for articulating the what, why, and how of the change, but they also need to make it relevant for their teams.
Leaders should consider who from their team will be impacted, the degree and type of impact, what matters to them, and what questions or concerns they might have. This will help inform how to tailor the core messages to make the change real for their teams and inspire the desired behaviors and actions.
For example, the change may fundamentally alter how work gets done for one team while impacting only decision rights for another. So, while some stakeholders may need detailed guidance and support, others may simply need awareness of what’s changing and why.
Bottom line: The most effective change stories are built on a foundation of shared core messages that leaders can tailor to authentically articulate the change in the specific context of their team’s day-to-day work.
It’s human nature for people to question change. Our brains are wired for it! Strong change leadership starts before the organization is asked to move toward the desired future state. Establishing alignment and clarity first helps people understand the change, what it means for them, and how to move forward together.
By bringing the right people together to shape the direction and crafting a clear story that leaders can tailor to build shared understanding across teams, change leaders will create a stronger foundation for everything that follows. The goal isn’t to eliminate the grapevine but to ensure its growth is sustained by alignment and clarity, not speculation.
Want to explore strategies for building alignment and clarity ahead of your next large-scale change initiative? Complete the form at the bottom of this page, and we’ll be in touch.