Well we've arrived in the Cloud and we need to go back and revisit some of the things that we need to have done along the way. The first one is building awareness and the topics we're going to discuss today are the importance of building awareness, key awareness building techniques, and the value of good news. Informed people are much more likely to offer support to your undertakings. Lack of information can lead to a number of things including suspicion, gossip, innuendo, or the creation of a false reality around the change. Raising awareness is a critical success factor. Let's just remind ourselves of the importance of raising awareness. Kotter's first step was to establish a sense of urgency which involves raising the awareness in stakeholders and he identified that an appealing case needs to be developed and shared. He also identified in step four the need to communicate that change. So let's remind ourselves about the importance of raising awareness. Openness based on communication builds trust. It creates clarity so that people clearly understand what is expected, what their obligations are. And also creates shared understanding, so that everybody understands the same things. This increases engagement and buy-in to the project and it answers the questions, what's in it for me? However, there is a risk. If we do not build that awareness appropriately, negativity can fester and spread and that could be very problematic. In a previous session, we talked about the contact, consult, and collaborate model. When we make contact, the objective is actually to plant the ideas in people's mind. This is the beginning of building that awareness. There's no need for detail at that time and it should be done with an expression of excitement about the pending change, talking about the value and the benefits that this is going to bring and it should start as early as possible. We also need to consider what we need to communicate and we need to develop and communicate that vision. Again, Kotter informed on this. The vision must be clear, concise, it must be something that people can relate to, should eliminate all jargon from the process, and it needs to be engaging so that people actually buy into it. And very importantly, it needs to be explained in two minutes in a very short space of time. Some things we need to bear in mind when we're communicating is the first rule is that we communicate, communicate, communicate. That might sound repetitive, but we can't overdo it. We need to use multiple forums, leverage all channels at our disposal, and have a consistency around the messaging that we're sending out. A great step forward to this is we can actually build role models to be able to talk the talk of what we're trying to communicate. From a further point of view, we need to create dialogue between different stakeholders and the project team, it needs to be personalized. Importantly, we need to listen to the opinions and the feedback that are coming from the stakeholders. We need to enlist sponsors in the process, people who are on our side and who want to see the change be successful. We need to start conversations so it's a dialogue which is emerging. And use existing forums so that people who are already familiar with these forums can use them. Things like project meetings, routine get together, social media that may be used for example. It's also important to deliver good news. Good news creates goodwill, and it enables people to engage positively with the change, be able to talk about it openly and with enthusiasm. It's also important that we deliver quick wins, if we possibly can, so that people can relate to those quick wins and identify the benefits and the value that it's actually contributing. We can also use real people if possible. Real people have been involved in the change. People have already started that journey and have been impacted by that journey because their stories carry a lot of weight. And feel good stories obviously make a positive impression on the way that we actually communicate. And it answers very much the question, what is in it for me? Takes away a lot of that nervousness that might be actually assigned with that. We also need to remind ourselves of some of the challenges that face us. Inertia, the propensity of an organisation to stay in its stable state, in its comfort zone. Remove that sense of complacency that Kotter talked about, overcome any resistance to the change. Look at how the lack of clarity can actually contribute or actually become a barrier to the way that we make that change happen. And also keep our eye on the grapevine, informal channels of communication, rumor, gossip, and general mischief around the project from those who are not quite brought in yet. In summary, raising awareness is a critical factor in successful change. You can't arrive in the Cloud in isolation and we need to bring our stakeholder communities along. Developing general awareness must commence as early as possible and it must continually engage stakeholders with good news and communication. Everybody who arrives in the Cloud must know why they're there and also feel good about it.
