Now that we have explored the implications of awareness in the change journey, we just want to look at the importance of communication. We will look at the communication model and also explore the place of communication in the overall change journey. Communication is importance because informed people are more likely to offer support to what you are trying to do. Communication builds the understanding and engagement in the stakeholder groups and it's critical to send the right messages at the right time so that people can actually absorb them within the context of their understandings. Communication starts with raising awareness. And Kotter identified that in terms of establishing that sense of urgency, and developing the appealing case and the need that needs to be developed and shared. Also in step four of Kotter, it's about communicating that change. To be effective at communication, we need to understand how the communication model actually works. It's critical that all components are present for effective communication to occur. In the first place there is the transmitter or the source of the communication. In this instance, it's my voice. There is a media over which this transmission takes place. In this case, it's the voice through the communication channels that you're actually watching this through. There is a receiver, your ears in this case. And very importantly there is the feedback loop to tell us that the message has been received and understood. There are different types of communication we need to think about and how we might use these at different stages. Verbal, probably the most obvious one, talking to people, conversations, dialog, there is written communication, reports whether they be formal or informal, blogs, messages that might be typed, e-mails even, and there are visual communications. A great deal of human interaction occurs non-verbally, in terms of body language. How we relate and react to other people in terms of the stance and emotional engagement they can display at that time. There are different types of communication that we might want to consider. The first one is person to person or face to face where individuals interact with each other. This can be in an one-on-one situation, sitting down having a conversation over a cup of coffee or an informal chat, or it could be in small groups, or it could be in a lecture where you've got multiple people in one place listening to somebody. There can be informal types and formal types of communication as well. A lecture is an example of a formal communication device. Informal devices might be those things like those chats or discussions which take place on a basis. We also need to consider how we communicate to people when they're not actually there, so we can't have that human interaction to the same degree. Examples of this, emails, so that people can read things regardless of whether they're with you or not, newsletters, bulletins, or even Vodcasts. We also need to consider the time and place and the situation of each of the actors in the process, who we're going to communicate and how is determined by this. Let's just look at a simple model in terms of time and place. There are different dimensions, different locations and different time. The first dimension is around the same time and the same place, that is, we're all together. We can meet face to face, individually or in groups. However we might be there at the same time, but we might be in a different place, which is more and more common in our virtual environment that we work in these days where we've got project members in different places. In these instances things like written communications or recordings overcome the barriers that are set by distance. We might be in the same place, but at a different time. Examples of this are in terms of shift work, some people might work different hours to you and the way that we might actually be able to communicate there is by using telecommunication links or video links. We might also be at a different time and a different place. In which case written communications and recordings are very important because people can actually pick those up and consume that communication when they're ready at the appropriate times. We also need to consider the situation of the actors and the way that they want to receive and interpret information. All people have a different propensity of the way that they like to consume information, which determines the way that we actually need to consider how we communicate with them. Some of the considerations are what level of detail do we give to people? Some people like high level pictures and maps of things whereas others need to have the deep understanding in the detail. Also what format do we present it in? Is it written? Is it in pictures or in diagrams? What is the most accessible way of communicating that to the person you're trying to communicate with? And we can personalize things, making it very specific to the individual so that they feel that they are being spoken to as an individual rather then just in the broadcast. It's also important to mind the language that we actually use. And I'm not talking necessarily about national languages, but in terms of the tone of voice that we use and the words that we select to talk to people. For example, in ICT, we're prone to using a lot of acronyms and jargon, which makes no sense to people in other professions. So try not to use them because it impedes communication. Communication is all about building commitment and this takes place over time. And we need to think about how we feed information which is focused to the individual audience at the right stages. Again using our model of contact, consultation, and collaboration we need to build engagement in different ways across that life cycle. There is also a warning that we need to put in place here because it is a real risk of Groupthink developing. And Groupthink's when people all think as one and don't question the assumptions under which the communications are actually made. That can result in some of the actors discounting the warning signs for problems actually developing. The Challenger spacecraft is an absolute example of problems that develop during Groupthink. The engineering team could not fathom the idea that they'd made a mistake and they overlooked a number of assumptions. It also manifests itself in terms of the group reinforcement of a position, so that the truth becomes a group consensus. And if any doubts arise that consensus suppresses those doubts, which may well be valid doubts and need to be serviced. So, in summary, we've discussed the communications model and that communication is a critical success factor in our move to the cloud. And we've discussed the need to feed information to the right people at the right level of detail at the right time. And everybody who arrives in the cloud must know why they're there, and they must be engaged.
