Provocateur:

Your world is constantly changing. Customer expectations are high. Market data rushes at you every hour. New technologies emerge daily. 

If you’re like most marketers, you’re struggling to keep pace with all these changes and with increasingly complex demands. You need your people to be nimble, to learn quickly, to collaborate with others, to embrace new methods—and be willing to toss them if they don’t prove valuable, and embrace new methods again!

You need your team to operate differently, fast.

How do you get them to embrace these different ways of working, interacting, engaging, problem solving, embracing data tools, and more?

Let’s think about that for a moment. 

How well are new policies and procedures embraced in your organization? If you’re like most teams and companies, it all depends on how well—and how quickly—those new expectations are embedded as practices.

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It doesn’t matter what the change is; it could be a new software system or a technology. What matters is what happens after the change is announced.

Most leaders operate under the faulty assumption that telling people what is expected ensures alignment to the change. This fallacy is known as “managing by announcements,” where leaders announce the details of a change, then expect that all players will immediately embrace the new expectations.

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Leaders can increase the success of new processes or procedures by embedding them, reinforcing them, and celebrating them—not just by announcing them.

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Before your team will embrace change, you must change how you present the change. You must preach it, yes, but then you must live it, model it, coach it, reinforce it, and embed it, every minute of every workday.

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Otherwise, people will keep on doing what they’ve always done, even if it’s not what your customers need or your business needs.

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Managing by announcements is no way to create a purposeful, positive, productive team culture. Leaders must be clear with new expectations and be consistent with modeling them, coaching them, and embedding them daily.

About the Author

S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, author, executive consultant, and founder of The Purposeful Culture Group. He’s one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Great Leadership Speakers and was a featured presenter at SXSW 2015.

Chris is the author of the Amazon best-seller The Culture Engine and five other books. Chris’s blog, podcasts, and videos are at Driving Results Through Culture. He tweets on organizational culture, servant leadership, and workplace inspiration at @scedmonds. Find his Culture Leadership Charge video episodes on Vimeo and YouTube.