Change vs Comms vs Training: Carving out your scope

Whether you’re an individual practitioner working solely on a change, or you’ve got a Change team to support you: how do you carve out the scope for your job in Change versus Communications and Training teams? 

First of all, enjoy that! Because too often it's just you and you are trying to do everything: all the communications, all the training, all the business readiness, all the support, all the engagement, all the stakeholder management, and you're trying to do it all. Having some dedicated resource from the business or from another area to help you with communications and training is a big win. It means you can really properly focus on Change. You don't have to dig down in the detail of training delivery and be running training sessions. It’s ideal. Saying that, even big programs as well as small projects might not have those resources. I’ve worked with consulting clients who don’t even have an internal Marketing team, let alone an Internal Communications team, and I do the Change brand and theme and design and elements myself in Canva (which I actually enjoy).

But if you do have the pleasure and benefit of working with dedicated Communications and Training teams who have this as their focus, here’s three big things to look out for: 

Watchout #1: They might feel their role is threatened

The first big thing is they will often feel you're stepping on their toes, especially if they are BAU teams (Business as Usual teams that sit in the business, regardless of what project is happening). Majority of the time it is Communications that feel Change is coming into their turf. They can be very resistant. I’ve had run-ins with multiple Communications professionals. I’m often just honest about it. Like literally one time I had to raise something on a reset and they were really angry and so I just said to my Head of Change, “You might get some feedback about me…” Just own it because that's more about them than it is about you if they're like, “Oh, Change is coming in to take over.” 

Another one just had a problem with me from the very beginning - they just feel like you’re coming into your turf even when you’re letting them do all the communications anyway! Communications seems to be really sticky about that. But then again I’ve also worked with Marketing and other Internal Comms teams who have been really lovely and really want to be a partner to Change. We've worked things out and they've gone and developed the change brand and theme, they write the comms and distribute them. And so it can also work really well. It really depends on the Communications person. 

Same with Training. It depends on the Training person. But I just found that there tends to be more of that stickiness around who's who in the zoo and where your lines of responsibility lie with Comms and Project Managers than with Training. They're the people that you'll have a bit more friction with, at least in my experience. Then you've got Training teams. Often there is a Learning and Development team in an organisation that might help. Or there might be just trainers. The very first change I ever worked on, there was just trainers. The only job that they had was to deliver training. That was all. Use them as an asset. It means you don't have to do it! 

What I would always recommend to set up the ways of working with them: do your normal engagement, take them for a coffee, take them out for lunch, do something to smooth it. Introduce who you are, your background, and what you do. 

Find out: 

• Have they worked with the Change Manager in the past?
• How's that been? 
• What worked well? 
• What didn't? 

Find out what their remit is:

• What's their role in the organisation?
• What are they focused on and what's a priority for them?

Especially for example, you might have an Internal Communications team who, at this point in time, their focus is to make sure that everything is brand aligned. Like, everything has to be brand colours. You might have another Communications team and their focus might be that everything is digital so they're doing a real push on digital. You're starting to find out what are their strategic priorities from a communications perspective. And if you find that out, you can be like, “It's great to know that, I really want to support you with that.”

I do exactly the same thing with HR teams or People and Culture teams. I’ll be like, “What are your strategic priorities? As part of this change, how can we help get you some wins on the board from what you are trying to do and how can I make sure that everything is aligned?” Then once you've worked that out, you can talk about “Great, how would you like to work together? What would you like to do?” Where I’ve had some friction points has been they want to write the comms but they have no capacity to write the comms. You're like, “Where is that comms?” And they're just not giving you a draft because maybe they're super busy and they're used to doing everything the day before, but that doesn't fly for you as Change in a project. That's too risky, right? If you can see they’re really busy or they’ve said they are, you might ask, “Would you like to be a reviewer? I can see that you're really busy so maybe do you want me to just do the bulk of the draft and then you can be a reviewer on the communications, and workshop them?” The same with the Training team. All you want to do is open the conversation. 

I try not to say things like, “Oh I’m a contractor so I’ll be gone in six months anyway.” But it's the truth. I’m not here for your role, I don't care what you do, I’m not here to take your role because I know I’m going to be moving on. But they feel like you are. So anything that you can say to put their mind at ease, like “You've got all the great relationships in the organisation and how things work,” or “It would be really great to have your support” and you're trying to give them a bit of power back. That's where the friction points will be: them feeling like you're stepping on their toes. 

Watchout #2: They might not produce the quality you need

Another big challenge is sometimes the quality of what they're creating might not be the quality that you need for the change. If that is the case, you might need to workshop a little bit with them. For example, one change that I was working on, we needed this Quick Reference Card and I had to go back and forth influencing with this Communications team to get this Quick Reference booklet for all staff. 100,000 people's pay was being impacted and the staff had no idea why as they wouldn't have read the 16-page enterprise agreement to understand why. I’m influencing till the cows come home to get this four-page booklet and I wrote it all and I had to just push-push-push because they would never have done that if I hadn't pushed for it. It just wasn't on their radar as a thing to do and I just had to keep influencing. You just have to sometimes try and help bring up a Comms team or a Training team or an L&D team to that strategic level and get them to see that bigger picture. 

For example, sometimes with L&D teams, they'll be like, “We are so busy, we don't have capacity to help you.” But ultimately they're going to need to own the BAU training and capability moving forward. Sometimes it's a strategic decision to have them involved. You actually want them involved so that they develop all of the training and materials as part of their entire learning ecosystem for down the track. They actually own the training moving forward. It's a lot of listening, relationship building. What one of my Heads of Change and I would call it together was, “Softly, softly”. Just creep forward, find out what they're thinking, find out how they're feeling. Keep building those relationships. If things get sticky, escalate. Sometimes to your Head of Change or Program Director or whatever will be able to smooth things over for you a little bit. It’s certainly happened to me before and I’ve escalated. Again, it's more about them than it is about you. I love Comms people, I love Learning and Development teams. They're actually such great partners to Change and I actually always feel very grateful when I get to have one of those support my Change. It is rare, sometimes you just don't get it. Or sometimes there is just those friction points.

Watchout #3: Change may be the overseer instead

In other cases, rather than doing the doing, where Change Management comes in is as the overseer of Comms and Training. As always, it depends on the project. For example, I’ve worked on projects where Change is that overarching thing and so Comms and Training sit underneath it. And when I run a Change Working Group, they come in and I am the mistress of all of those activities and they all have to align to my Change Plan. At other times, Comms or Training may be split out as separate streams. 

For example, with one consulting client I worked with they had a Training team and a Training Lead. In terms of me coming into the organisation and into the project, they definitely saw themselves as a separate team. In that case, when I’m creating a project matrix of who's in the project, I’ve kept them as separate (same on my Change Plan). I just kept them really close and I said to them, “I don't want to duplicate your training activities, you’re leading training. I just want to be in the loop with you about what you're doing and when you're doing it and help workshop with you along the way, if you want me to.” And then I just found out when their key training activities are, popped them on my Change Plan. But that project used Jira (a system to help manage project tasks) and I didn’t create Jira cards for trainingbecause those Jira cards are owned by them.

It really depends, because sometimes you work on a project and Comms or Training is literally a separate stream. You just have to judge it by the project and have the conversation with them and with the Project Manager and just judge it. There is no one size fits all and that’s why so much of Leading Successful Change is more about building your confidence. What you do for one project might be completely different to another project, even in the same organisation. So I would just see where they think they are. Do they think that they report into Change or do they think that they report straight into the project, and if so represent it that way. And then it might be more of a conversation of, “Can I just stay across your plans? Can I just be included in your workshop when you're planning out the schedule?” and stay close that way because you want to be able to say when training is as that's all part of the people readiness.

Essentially, it all comes down to relationships and a great way to build relationships is to meet in-person over coffee or food. That’s why I’m excited to be hosting an intimate and exclusive VIP Dinner when I come to London in June to speak at the Business Change and Transformation Conference. The dinner will be a gourmet group banquet and you’ll have the chance to meet me and connect with other like-minded Change-loving professionals. It’s on Tuesday 17 June and if you’re based in the UK I really hope you can join us:

>> Find out more about the London VIP Dinner and secure your spot

All my belief,

Lata