MMHA 6111 Week 7 Change Communication Calendar Example

Communication Cadence: A Calendar From Announcement to the First Month at the Combined Site

Student Name

Walden University

MMHA 6111: Leadership and Organizational Change

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Communication Cadence: A Calendar From Announcement to the First Month at the Combined Site

Introduction

Communication sections in change plans often describe a launch announcement and then fall silent, which leaves people to fill the silence with rumor during the months when the change is actually happening. This calendar spans the whole consolidation of the composite Westside Imaging Center into the hospital imaging department, from announcement in January to the first month at the combined site in July. It sets a recurring rhythm for each audience, names a guiding coalition member who carries each channel and includes a listening route that sends staff questions back to the people deciding. Kotter argues that change efforts typically under-communicate their vision by a wide margin, and that a vision is communicated more by repeated, consistent messages through many channels than by a single announcement (Kotter, 2012).

The Calendar

Table 1 shows the calendar by audience and period.

Table 1

Communication Calendar by Audience and Period

The Guiding Coalition

Six people carry the channels, chosen so that each audience hears from someone it already trusts. The Westside lead technologist reaches Westside technologists and is the person they turn to now. The hospital lead technologist reaches hospital technologists. A Westside front desk staff member and a central scheduling supervisor jointly reach schedulers and front desk staff, and will co-lead the template building. The imaging medical director reaches radiologists and referring offices, whose physicians respond to a physician. The imaging manager hosts the monthly forum and answers for decisions. Kotter describes a guiding coalition as a group with enough position power, expertise, credibility and leadership to drive the change (Kotter, 2012). This coalition is chosen mainly for credibility with each audience, because the manager alone does not have it with every group.

What Each Message Must Carry

Each cell in the calendar carries one message, not a list. Changes produce more information than any audience can absorb, and a message that tries to say everything says little. For Westside technologists in the first months, the message is acknowledgment of what they are losing and a commitment to address it, because the impact grid identified desire as their weakest point. For hospital technologists, the message is how their own week will change, because awareness is their gap. For referring offices, it is the new number and date, repeated three times, because an office that misses it will send a patient to a closed site.

The Listening Route

Communication that only flows down does not reach the people deciding. The calendar includes a listening route. Questions raised at any huddle are written down by the lead and sent to the manager by the end of the day. Staff can also submit questions anonymously through a box at each site and an online form, which matters because, as Edmondson found, team members raise concerns more readily when they feel psychologically safe (Edmondson, 1999), and not everyone feels safe asking in front of colleagues. The manager answers every question within a week, in writing, at the next huddle, and posts the answers on a shared page. Questions that reveal a problem with the plan, such as the parking concern Westside staff raised for older patients, are taken to the coalition, and the response is reported back. The route is judged by one measure: the share of questions answered within a week.

Matching Channel to Audience

Each channel was chosen for how its audience already receives information. Technologists at both sites start the week with a Monday huddle, so the calendar uses it rather than adding a meeting they would have to leave patients to attend. Schedulers meet weekly already, so the consolidation becomes a standing item there. Radiologists attend a monthly section meeting and read notes from their medical director, so that is the route. Referring offices are small practices with busy front desks; a letter alone is easily lost, so the calendar pairs each letter with a phone call from the medical director's office to the office manager. The monthly open forum is the one new channel, created because some questions cut across groups and deserve a common answer heard by everyone at the same time. Matching channels to existing habits also reduces the burden of the change itself, which is already asking a great deal of everyone's time.

Silence and Repetition

The calendar deliberately continues into the first month at the combined site, when most communication plans have ended. That month is when the change is most real to staff, when problems surface and when the temptation to recreate old routines is strongest. Bridges and Bridges describe the period after a change as a neutral zone, in which old ways are gone and new ones not yet established, and argue that it needs more communication, not less (Bridges & Bridges, 2016). The daily joint huddle and the end-of-month forum are there to keep the conversation going until the new routines settle.

References

Bridges, W., & Bridges, S. (2016). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (4th ed.). Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.