Sun Communicators' Group Blog

Communications and Change

At the beginning of 2008, I shared my personal experiences with watching US Presidential Primary candidates talk to NH voters about "change."

With just a few weeks until the general election in November, the word CHANGE  is being used A LOT by both parties.  (Since this is a blog tied to Sun, I'll keep my political opinions on the candidates to myself, but do feel that I can share my thoughts about the communications techniques and styles being used by both campaigns - since afterall, communications at Sun is a big part of my role.  I've worked on many communications projects  over 10 years at Sun and many have been tied to the topic of 'change' and 'change acceptance'.)

This morning,  I had a call with an HR business partner who is working on project with me that has the potential to drive some positive change in our organization.   During our call, she told me that she's going to start to work on the "Change Acceptance" plan for the project in the next week to use for initial kick off meetings in October.    I  am thrilled!!  This is the first time ever, that I was not asked to create the communications plan for a project first.  

YES!! CHANGE PLANS DRIVE COMMUNICATIONS PLANS!  We are singing from the same choir book!  (It makes me very excited to roll up my sleeves and work on this project.)

When our discussion ended at noon ET, I turned on my local news radio to hear what's going on in the world - and immediately heard two political ads -- Guess what?  They both talked about 'change' being needed in this country.  But neither communication told me what kind of change and how it could be accomplished. 

I worry about this (with both parties).  I know that change is usually hard when it has to be implemented - I see it every day in the work that I do at Sun.  

I wonder how the political polls would fair if either candidate were to get ahead of the 'communication' about the need for change and actually articulated what needs to be changed (as well as how the change would happen and what it might mean to me, personally.)  If that were to happen, I bet we'd see very different communications on the topic -  and the word 'change' would not be taken so much for granted.

Posted at 09:51AM Sep 10, 2008 by sandyb in Best Practices  |  Comments[0]