How Do You Build a “Change Communication Toolkit” for Line Managers?

In the chapter Line Managers 6.4 What is the “Change Communication Toolkit” for Line Managers? we looked at a powerful communication toolkit that can support your change campaign. In this chapter, let us look at how to actually built one.

The main assumptions used are that we have an average sized budget with a 3 months’ timeline. There are 3 steps:

• Step 1: Develop a concept for your toolkit
• Step 2: Create the content for your toolkit
• Step 3: Design and produce the toolkit

Please Make the Toolkit Menu-Driven. Why?

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty details on how to design and create a toolkit, let us first take a look at a very important aspect of the change communication campaign which will have a big influence on this toolkit: giving Asian managers choices on how they want to implement the change. So why give choices?

An Observation. In Asia Pacific, when the Asian managers receive instructions or plans from their HQ or their main offices, they take it very seriously. In many cases, they will carry out the instructions to the last dot. One reason could be because they are “protecting their rice bowl” (please read Change 3.1 Why is Change Always About People?.) Another reason could be because of the pressure from their expatriate bosses who are protecting their “future rice bowl”, because they will one day return back to their HQ country after their assignment in Asia and who wants to build bad karma.

There are exceptions of course. For example, some experienced or outspoken Asian managers may have the courage to tell HQ that they have a different idea or that they would like to customise a given global plan to suit a local audience in a certain way (with or without success). But by-and-large, Asian managers, for various reasons, end-up doing mostly what their HQ wants of them.

Why do you want to give choices to managers? It is a basic human nature to have the freedom to make choices in life. Instead of giving the managers a standard change program to roll out, why can’t we give them choices? Same destination but just different pathways. Giving choices to gives them control and more importantly it empowers them. He will feel that he is moulding his own program based on his department’s needs. And if you continue to treat him as the master and commander of his ship, he will eventually own the change program. And when he owns it, he will accomplish it. Enabling managers to take ownership of something volunteerly is one of the most hardest things to do in Asia. And during times of change, it gets even worse. Therefore a strategy such as offering choices on how to roll-out the change helps to manage this challenge.

What is a “fixed” package and what is a “variable” package”? There are basically two approaches when you want to create toolkits that offer choices to managers: “fixed” and “variable” (yes, as in housing loan interest rates):

Fixed: Tailor-make, say, 3 different change communication packages and give them names, for example, “Launch Package I, II and III” or “Rapid Fire, New Journey, Long March” etc. The “cake” (core) parts of these packages are essentially the same but the “icing” (non-core) differs. The manager has to choose one of these packages and roll it out to his team. They can’t add or subtract anything from the package. That’s why it’s called “Fixed”.

Variable: Make one core package that takes care of the “cake” (core) elements of the change program. Then make a list of “add-ons” (“icing”) that the managers can add onto this core package. In this way, they can make a tailor-made package that is more customized to their department’s needs, budgets and other factors.

All choices regardless of whether they are “fixed” or “variable” help the managers to drive change into their teams. It’s just the way that they are packaged and offered that seems different.

Is there a Third Approach? Yes, you can combine the “fixed” and “variable” packages together. But I think that there are already sufficient challenges in properly planning and rolling out either a “fixed” or a “variable” package and therefore I personally would not recommend making it even more complicated by creating a hybrid.

 

How Long is Needed to Produce a Tool Kit for Managers?

In my best estimation, six months are a reasonable timeframe to produce a high quality toolkit for managers in Asia Pacific. However, it can also be accomplished in three months, if needed, as shown in the Gantt chart below:

[No LinkedIn feature to display image here. Please click at blog link below to see chart]

• Week 1-2: Bring the team together and write down a project plan
• Week 3: 3 Brainstorming workshops with different target audiences
• Week 4: Bring workshop results together, fill-in details and share it with your agency 
• Week 5: Present final plan to management for alignment and make corrections
• Week 6-7: Work on the draft and final designs
• Week 8: Check final designs and give the “go-ahead” for production
• Week 9-12: Toolkit is produced and delivered

 

How do you manage this tight schedule? As you can see from above, a three-month schedule will be quite a squeeze. Multiple steps and tasks have to be completed in the same week in many cases. There will be a tremendous amount of pressure on the sub-project team producing the toolkit. They may have to work long hours and even overtime. In short, it will be tough but not impossible. However, I have to make the following assumptions for the sake of sanity:

• Tool kit sub-project team leader has a sponsor or advisor behind him
• Tool kit sub-project team leader has prior project management experience
• Someone in the team has prior print production experience
• Management approval for a toolkit and a budget is already in place
• Agency is an approved company supplier and is ready to jump in and work

And every additional week and month that you can give to this 3 month timeline to extend it makes the working pace less stressful and gives more space for a better quality and more creative end results.

Step 1: Develop a Concept For Your Tool Kit

What is the best way to develop a concept for your toolkit? The best way to develop good concepts for your tool kit would be to organise a series of workshops to talk to different groups of people. Below is a short guideline to organize such brainstorming workshops:

What should be the agenda for the brainstorming workshops? Here is a simple workshop agenda that tries to answer 3 important questions:

• 30 mins Opening: Welcome, introduction and warm-up activities
• 30 mins Group Discussion 1: What should be the tool kit’s functional elements?
• 20 mins Consolidation & Summary
• 30 mins Group Discussion 2: How can we make this toolkit fun to use?
• 20 mins Consolidation & Summary
• 30 mins Group Discussion 3: How should the branding, design & packaging be?
• 20 mins Consolidation & Summary
• 30 mins Closing: Overall Summary, Wrap-up, Next Steps

 

How long should the brainstorming workshops be? The above is a basic 3.5 hours workshop schedule which makes a half-a-day workshop program. You can expand this into a full day workshop if you want. But why spend a full day doing something when you can finish it in half-a-day? On the other hand, I would not recommend anything shorter than half-a-day.

What kind of moderator is needed for the brainstorming workshops? Ensure that the workshop moderator has some facilitation experience and especially knows how to create an open and free environment to bring out ideas.

Who should you invite for the brainstorming workshops? I would recommend 3 half-a-day workshops focusing on different target audiences. The eventual users of this toolkit would be the line managers. So how about asking them on what should go inside their tool kits and posing the same question to their superiors as well as their subordinates? This approach will help you to quite adequately cover all the possibilities and perspectives to create a really useful toolkit. Further tips below:

• Invite 3 Types of Participants: Target audience for brainstorming workshop 1 are the heads of the line managers. If time is a constraint, you can trim down the workshop schedule to 2 hours for the heads. Brainstorming workshop 2 should be with a group of staff and brainstorming workshop 3 is with a group of line managers.
• Bring a Cross-Section of People: Also always ensure that you have a cross-section of people in each workshop. Production, IT, HR, finance, sales, communication etc people. Locals and foreigners. Newly hired or newly promoted staff. Staff who have won long service awards and staff who are about to retire.
• Look for Outspoken and Creative People: Also select participants who are known for their outspoken nature and creative ideas. Otherwise it will be a very tough job for the moderator to “milk” the ideas out of a very “cold” audience.
• Use workshop 1 & 2 Results as Input for Workshop 3: Please bring the results workshop 1 (with heads) and workshop 2 (with staff) into workshop 3 (managers). In this way, you will be helping to bring additional inputs for the managers’ considerations.

 

How big should the workshop group size be? Each workshop should have about 9 – 12 participants for really high quality results. In this way, you can have 3 groups of 3 or 4 for the group discussions. From experience I know that when a group size gets to 5, you will immediately lose some participants’ active contributions.

What is the format for the brainstorming workshops? You need a structure for your brainstorming workshops and below is a recommendation based on answering the 3 simple but important questions:

1. Functionality: What should be the tool kit’s functional elements?
2. Fun Factors: How can we make this toolkit fun to use?
3. Branding and Design: How should the branding, design and packaging be?

 

What should be the tool kit’s functional elements?

• Scope. Do not get carried away by the toolkit. No matter what you put inside, no toolkit will bring any magical result or benefit to the change cause on its own. It has to be part of an overall solution. Therefore be realistic on the toolkit’s contribution to the change success and do not over overspend your time, energy and resources on the toolkit.
• Usefulness: What can be put into this toolkit that can make the line manager’s change task easier? In what ways can the line manager use this toolkit for his day-to-day work? You have to think hard and discuss to answer these questions, which holds the key to the secret of your toolkit’s success. In one word: Usefulness.
• Practicality: Go for practicality first and then look at the fun factors and design ideas later. Asian managers are very practical. If your tool kit is not practical, they will chuck it into one corner and that’s the end of your toolkit.
• Connectivity: What are the things already in the company that can be integrated into or connected with this toolkit? How tightly integrated will this toolkit be in the overall change communication toolkit?
• Easy to use: Is it easy to use? Is it easy for a manager to quickly find a piece of information, say a minute before a meeting? Do you have a contents page, index, page numbers and use labelled color page dividers? Are the topics clearly labelled with headings and sub-headings? Are you using more text or more images to explain?
• Localise it: Localise it by using local context and local examples. Produce the tool kit in your local language. For more tips on localization, please refer to localization 7.1: Why Do You Need to Localise the Way You Communicate Change in Asia Pacific?.

How can we make this toolkit fun to use?

• Fresh ideas: Look at how many of the ideas in the toolkit are new or old? I would highly recommend new ideas or new information or at least old information presented in new ones in the toolkit. Else it would not be seen as fresh or interesting or exciting. What other new things can you add to the manager’s toolkit?
• Games: Can you think of some team games that the team can play while discussing the business topics? Can there be a fun quiz or a puzzle?
• Gifts: Is there a chance to add a gift item to the toolkit? Maybe a stationary item or something more symbolic?
• Drawings and Visual Thinking Maps (VTM): Do you want to include a drawing that shows and explains the change or the behaviours needed to support the change?
• Feedback: Is there a way for the manager to collect feedback from the team on the change topic? Can we insert a survey form or a discussion question to collate opinions?

 

How should the branding, design and packaging be?

• Branding: Make the packaging as exciting as the contents of the box. Wrap it up in your corporate logos and place your “war cries” or slogans on them. And give your toolkit box a name. e.g. “Launch Kit”, “Manager’s Toolkit”, “Survival Toolkit” or some other more fancy names.
• Theme. You can also wrap-up your toolkit (for that matter your entire change communication campaign) with a theme. It’s very much the same way you go to a “pirate” style birthday party or “Martian” style new year celebration or a “Hollywood” style product launch. Suitable themes could be an outdoor adventure, a motorcar race, a treasure hunt, martial arts grading etc.
• Corporate design: Make sure that you follow your company’s corporate design guidelines. You are trying to change people’s behaviours and mindsets, not your company’s corporate design rules. So please bring your company’s communication colleagues or your company’s corporate design agency onboard as early as possible to look into these topics.
• Portability: Is your toolkit big and bulky or is it easy to carry and move from meeting room to meeting room? Does it hold well together with a folded laptop? Is it convenient and light to bring it along on business trips either via interstate trains or flights?
• Storage: Is it easy to store? Does it occupy a large amount of office space? Is it something that you can put on the manager’s table? A nice looking tool kit that is too big or bulky will easily find its way into the managers’ cupboards where it will be forgotten.
• Distribution: The best way to distribute the tool kits would be in a way that it’s logistically easy while also creating the biggest impact, which is at the kick-off meeting or event for the line managers. The managers can pick up the toolkit at the reception table or the registration counter and acknowledge their receiving with a signature before bringing it into the event.
• Training to use the toolkit. You need to brief the managers on how to use the tool kit when you distribute them and depending on the complexity of the toolkit, may even have to give them a training (I prefer giving a training regardless). It does not help that you put your heart and soul into developing an awesome manager’s toolkit but they don’t use it simply because don’t know how to.

 

Step 2: Create the Content For Your Tool Kit

What do you mean by “create the content”? The brainstorming workshops will only help you to create a concept and a list of suitable ideas for your toolkit. However, you will still need additional meetings and discussions to work on the hundreds of details needed for the toolkit. You need to explain what is this tool kit about, explain all the tools and how to use them.

In many cases, if your concept development workshops were well-organised with clear outcomes, Step 2 is normally manageable, else it can become a monstrous task that you underestimated.

Why is this step the most difficult? This is because Step 2 is actually where you create the content and write the entire tool kit out. This step is the most difficult amongst the three steps because sometimes you need to create content and write from scratch.

How do you manage this challenging step? It would be wise to divide the tasks to different team members or pairs to work on. Then everyone can come together one day to exchange their ideas and to tie them together. Here are some useful tips for Step 2:

• The Writing Task: Get someone who is proficient in writing to write-up the toolkit. The main tasks are organising the content, writing, editing and checking and checking and checking. And please keep the language plain and simple.
• Avoid “corporate-speak”. Writing in a very official way can sound nice but it can create a distance between the effort and the audience because it will sound official and ” cold”. You should instead write in a down-to-earth, friendly and “conversational” way. Or you can also hire a professional agency to do it as a last resort if you can’t manage it in-house.
• Make Sure Its Localised. Either way, please be familiar with the localization needs as described in localization 7.1: Why Do You Need to Localise the Way You Communicate Change in Asia Pacific?. Make sure the tool kit looks and feels that it is created for the local audience and not a “copy-and-paste” effort of HQ.
• Use Existing Initiatives. Find a way to connect with some or all of your company’s existing strategies, program and projects. This will help you form a powerful coalition for your change messages and activities.
• Collect Samples. Collect ideas from the internet, talk to people and bring samples together. These can be invaluable when briefing your agency.
• Talk to your Agency. Assuming your company is working with an experienced supplier, try to also brainstorm and work with your agencies. They have a wealth of experience due to serving a multitude of clients on different projects.
• Look at Competitors. Look at what your competitors are doing and understand their strategy behind the tactics. You can copy and modify their strategy if you want but definitely do not copy their tactics.
• Look at Other industries. Look at other industries and see what they are doing. I have often borrowed the points or miles based rewards system concept from the airlines and credit card companies and used it to create loyalty programs in the automotive aftermarket businesses where the idea was considered fresh and ground breaking.

Step 3: Design and Produce Your Tool Kit

What is this step about? After you have developed a concept for your toolkit and the necessary content, bring it to your management and your agency to begin the next steps: design and production. Your agency plays the biggest and most important role in this step and so keep your relationship with them cordial and friendly. And be alert and be on a “check-check-check” mode else you will not bear the fruits of Step 1 and 2.

How do you budget for the toolkit? I recall one project team made up of managers and communication professionals fixing the budget for managers’ toolkits without any discussion or planning and then later trying to “fill” that toolkit with items. Instead, you should first decide what you want the toolkit to do and then estimate the money you need to do that. Therefore the right steps should be a brainstorming workshop as recommended above followed by a budgeting exercise.

When do you get management approval? After your brainstorming workshop, describe your concept in a PPT and get your management approval. Be prepared to have some parts axed but try to hold on to your “cake” (core) elements. Thereafter start your sourcing process, if needed, and parallelly organise additional workshops and meetings to add more details to the toolkit plan. It may be also the case that you return back to the management circles with further updated plans for further alignments.

When do you start the sourcing process? As for any project which requires external suppliers, most international companies have well-established sourcing processes. Which means it will be thorough and will take time to bring a vendor who is an important partner, onboard. Therefore please start early. I recall that for one expensive launch event for managers, the event vendor was brought onboard less than 3 months before the event, which is considered very late.

What are the production steps with the agency?

Brief and discuss with the agency.

• Sometimes you have to explain the same things to different people in the agency again and again. Therefore it’s always smart to be well-planned and prepared. Write down all your requirements for the toolkit on a paper. If will be even better if you have samples, photos, images from the internet etc and anything that quickly brings the agency closer to the picture you have in your head. And use that to explain your concept to the agency.
• Let the agency come back with their own ideas, pictures and samples.
• Discuss together to keep the good ideas and drop the bad ones.
• Make a final confirmation to start the designing and production process proper.

 

Review the design drafts and finalize it.

• In most cases, the vendor will come up with several design options, and when you have chosen one, will offer you several rounds of changes and fine tuning for you. Use all of these services wisely as anything additional beyond those limits may be billed as additional costs.
• Check the drafts very carefully and be meticulous with your proofreading (checking the written text for mistakes). This is best done if you can distribute it to several colleagues to spot mistakes. Select colleagues who are not familiar with the content.
• Then come together to consolidate the mistakes, document it and pass those observations to the vendor to make the corrections.
• Do not leave the checking task to just one person. He can find it stressful and he may not spot all the mistakes.

 

Check the final mock-ups.

• Get a mock-up version to show your project team and your management how the toolkit will look like. It also helps to “manage expectations” and to avoid any surprises when and if what they saw on paper and what they have in their hands look different.
• Call couple of managers for a short coffee talk and pass the mock-up around and ask for some feedback.
• Bring their feedback back to the vendor for additional fine-tuning.

 

Give the “go-ahead” for mass production.

• After seeing the final mock-up and after all corrections and changes have been completed, give the “go-ahead” for the mass production of your toolkits.
• It might be a good idea to ask the vendor to send you the first tool kits produced for you to take a look before they do their complete production runs. Sometimes this is not possible, but you can check. It’s just another “risk management” step.

 

Store it or deliver it.

• You would probably need to store your toolkits until the day you need them. In some cases, the vendor might be able to do this for you if it’s for a month or less for free or for a small fee.
• Else you might have to store it in your company premises or find a third-party warehouse.
• A smart solution would be that you store it in a storage facility in the event venue itself where you plan to distribute these toolkits to the managers. Less moving around, fewer chances of your toolkits getting damaged. This helps you to manage the risks of damaged good as it happens many times in Asia Pacific.

 

Best Practices & Takeaways

“Fixed” and “Variable” packages: Give the managers choices in the toolkit. You can give them “fixed” or variable” packages. “Fixed” means they choose 1 out 3 fixed change communication packages and execute it. “Variable” means all managers have to implement a core package and choose from a range of add-ons that they can mix-and-match.

Timeframe: A good time frame is 6 months. This can be cut to 3 months if needed but it can be stressful for the team handling it. Getting management approvals and going through the sourcing processes are two topics that can take a long time. Therefore if you are short of time, at least take care of the above two tasks outside the 3 month’s timeframe.

3 Development Steps: There are 3 steps to build a toolkit: 1: Develop a concept for your toolkit. Step 2: Create the content for your toolkit. Step 3: Design and produce the toolkit.

Step 1. Develop the concept: Organise 3 different workshops to talk to different people to create your tool kit concepts. Ask these 3 simple but important questions to generate ideas: 1. What should be the functional elements of this toolkit? 2. How can we make this toolkit fun to use? 3. How should the branding, design and packaging be?

Step 2. Create the Content: This is actually a very important development part of the toolkit and can be easily underestimated. There is a big amount of writing tasks involved. Also ensure that the toolkit is localised for the local audience.

Step 3. Design and Produce: The design and production of the toolkit is largely in the hands of your agency. Make sure that you have a good relationship because you have to work together very closely in this step.

Coming up next:

Line Managers 6.6 – How Do You Organize a Kick-off Event for Your Line Managers?

 

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Read more at https://thoseinchargeofchange.com/2017/12/07/how-to-make-a-toolkit