You call all the leaders together and lay out the plan for a major change coming in six months. Lots of details. All questions answered. You explain that you will need their help to ensure employees get on board and take the required training. You get a strong thumbs up from most of the audience. Perfect!
You provide a ton of communication and equip leaders with simple speaker notes to reinforce key points in their team meetings.
Two months later you run a survey for employee readiness and find that many people are unaware of the change and what they need to do to prepare. Uh-oh.
You corner a few managers and ask if they have been relaying messages. All of them are apologetic, but call out competing priorities. Their bosses have them focused on other things. They want to support your program but there’s no way they can jam your messaging in among everything else that needs to be said and done.
A 2023 study by Gartner found that the typical manager has 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage.
This week’s message is simple. Your change is one among many initiatives in the company. Managers with the best of intentions will let you down when their bosses set alternate priorities and reward the completion of every other task except yours. It’s unlikely that the workload is going to decrease, so you have to shift where your project ranks.
We need our managers on board. Our managers need capacity to help us. Effective change requires support from the top and not just lip service. Make it clear that a lack of tangible support will severely compromise your ability to generate the returns they expect. Senior leaders must call out change as a priority, pay attention to progress, and reinforce engagement by making it part of annual goals.
We need our middle managers! Let’s equip them for success from the top!
