Commcoterie

Hey Reader, I’ll be honest with you: no organization I’ve ever encountered has had the capacity to change well. Even the best leaders either optimistically overestimate capacity or are in denial about the resourcing and bandwidth of their teams. And in their darker moments? They might acknowledge that their teams don’t have the resourcing and bandwidth for change, but think This is just the way it is! We can’t keep piling on endless resources. They’re just going to have to deal with it and...

Hey Reader, One thing I encourage leaders to do independently of developing and implementing change strategies is to understand the capacity of their organizations to change – or really, just the capacity of their organizations. Because individuals and teams don’t just need capacity for major transformation. They need capacity for any change, any additional work, any new project, any shiny new initiative (to me, anything above and beyond the status quo, if there even is a status quo anymore,...

Hey Reader, Over the past few years, I’ve put some serious effort into striking from my vocabulary as much cringe-worth workplace jargon as possible. Unfortunately, I am not only what is often referred to as a “management consultant” (cringe), but a change management and stakeholder communication consultant no less (the cringiest of cringes), so this has been a lot harder than it sounds. One of the worst phrases that has sunk its slimy tentacles into my lexicon, and which I am ready to bid...

Hey Reader, Last week, I spoke at the Elevating Employee Communications: Shaping the Future of the Modern Employee Experience Conference in NYC. These conferences bring together internal communication experts from across the country to deliver workshops, keynotes, and panels about how to truly connect with, engage, and inform employees. Internal communication is kind of a passion of mine. When a group of people spend the majority of their waking hours under the umbrella of the same mission,...

Hey Reader, Have you ever been on the receiving end of an organizational change announcement and wondered, how the hell did they decide on this? Or, why are they talking about Y when the problem we have is clearly X? Or, where on earth did this decision even come from? Stakeholders often feel this way when the strategy for a change isn’t aligned with the true purpose of the change. Imagine if you wanted more space in your living room, so you bought a mansion…when you could have simply gotten...

Hey Reader, Did you miss the most viral image from last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C.? The one of Elon Musk on stage next to Argentina's far-right President Javier Milei, waving a chainsaw in the air? If so, I envy you and your news algorithm. Mine is basically all Musk, all day. A gift from Milei, the chainsaw was apparently a reference to the “chain saw plan” for Milei's own government – essentially what Musk is doing to the US government right now. When...

Hey Reader, In my last newsletter of 2024, I gave readers a peek behind the content curtain and shared my newsletter's focus for 2025: helping leaders develop cultures of change readiness, build their organizations’ overall change capabilities, and expand their organizations’ capacities for change. All year long, I’ll be sharing the key tools, methods, and areas to focus on when it comes to developing change readiness. More importantly, I hope to help leaders with their mindset, positioning...

Hey Reader, At the end of Commcoterie's last newsletter, I said that in this issue, I would show you how defining the purpose of a change – its why – helps a change strategy design itself. But the responses I got to our last newsletter, plus the conversations I've been having recently with leaders, make me want to take a step back, reiterate something, and unpack it a little first: when you state the purpose of a change, it has to be the real why, or the tactic of using the purpose to more...

Hey Reader, One of the most alarming things I experience when working with leaders to help them navigate their people through organizational change is when they can’t answer one question: Why? As in: Why are you adopting this new technology? Why are you conducting a salary equity study? Why are you asking for customer feedback? Why are you hiring a coach for your management team? Why are you launching this new product? Why are you redesigning your website? Why are you updating your company...

Hey Reader, I spend a lot of time analyzing how change goes wrong. How launches fail. How new initiatives fizzle. How transformations flop. I see it happen in the news and on LinkedIn. I hear about it from colleagues, collaborators, and clients. I put in long hours trying to correct it when I’m brought in on projects and programs that aren’t hitting their goals (honestly the hardest work – and I’m kind of over it). But it doesn’t have to be this way. I know change is not easy. Things won’t go...