And Carrie On

Changing things is hard– people, processes, situations. It doesn’t matter: it’s all hard!

As a MarComm leader, our job is to sometimes be the change agent If a process is broken or something isn’t achieving the results it needs. Our job is to figure out the change that is needed and bring the people together to make the change.

It’s that simple, right? Well, no. If it were that easy, people would have mastered change.

A Change Management Strategy to Help

One strategy I use to help make change more palatable is the idea of two degrees of change. This is an over-time strategy, but it works really well, especially if getting consensus is important. It’s also effective in low trust situations because most people are comfortable with making small, two-degree adjustments.

With the two degrees of change principle, you only tackle two degrees each time you complete the task. This lets everyone feel fairly comfortable and doesn’t require monumental shifts. However, as a leader, you’re able to make significant strides in the work by being committed to small changes over time.

The hardest part for the leader is to be comfortable in a slow, consistent approach. Sometimes as leaders we see all the adjustments needed and want to do everything at once. There are certainly moments for that. However, sometimes a slower more deliberate approach is needed, and that’s when the two degrees model works really well.

Here are a few places I’ve used this model:

• Print material creation
• Communication flows
• Team project dynamics
• Office cleaning
• Advertising shifts

A Case Study Example:

At a prior university we mapped the enrollment funnel and were surprised to learn that it crossed 17 offices and 5 divisions. Just let that sink in.

The impact of that:

• Multiple messages at any given time to prospective students
• No alignment on tone, message, or design
• Multiple websites with different pieces of the enrollment steps
• Inconsistent and confusing instructions to prospective students

This was the perfect situation to use a two degrees model. A significant overhaul was needed, but that was a really strong ask, especially when these groups hadn’t worked together heavily. It was a low trust (simply because of lack of collaboration) situation.

To handle this, we brought everyone together for a monthly meeting. The goal of the meeting was to create a two degrees movement, without creating panic for anyone around the table.

Year One:

We simply asked people to join the meeting each month and share their biggest monthly communication. This helped the rest of the team to understand the different divisions and their processes. Additionally, we created a calendar and asked people to log what days they sent communication to prospective students.

What we didn’t do: We shared we were in no way changing the messages or when people could send. We were all just trying to learn. This seemed reasonable to everyone, and it was incredibly beneficial to see what was being communicated and when.

Year Two:

We kept the monthly meeting conversations and started having conversations about simplification. Because of the logging, several folks realized we were over communicating and began thinking of how we might address the challenge.

We were in the middle of a website redesign and agreed to start on the website, as it was a place we all struggled with (shared agreement) and knew it was a place students could easily get information.

We developed a concept for a webpage that instead of being organized by offices it would be organized by the order of steps needed. That meant all the relevant information would be on this site and not on the individual department sites. We agreed to take another year and test this with a subset of students to see if it worked the way we thought it would. That allowed us to slowly get comfortable with the idea.

We also agreed that we weren’t going to make major message changes to print items. However, we were going to explore adding a similar coating on print materials to help with consistency. Our MarComm team offered to do any redesigns to match the university style and about half of the offices (on their own) volunteered, but nothing was forced.

We still hadn’t touched email messages or messages on printed pieces that we weren’t helping with.

Year Three:

Toward the end of year two, we set our goals for year three. Those involved implementing the website concept for information in one space with multiple editors.

Another task that we agreed to tackle was to put all print pieces in a similar style and to work to make sure the messaging of those items aligned.

*I left to become the CMO at UA Little Rock, so I didn’t get to be part oft this and future conversations.

Year Four:

I was gone by this time but some of the things that were in early phases of discussion for year four were things like reviewing email comm plans, text messages, and other more personalized communication moments.

In Closing

As you can see from the case study, this plan isn’t the fastest, but it allows you to manage major shifts in small, actionable steps. It’s a great way to make something feel comfortable without swooping in and changing everything all at once.

Another reason this model can be great is that it gives you the opportunity to test things. The year we took to test the webpage in a controlled setting helped everyone see the results and know that it would work the way we thought.

Throughout these steps, there were never any moments of panic, because we intentionally worked to slowly iterate over time to make the changes.

If you’re facing a big change that is complex and involves lots of people and opinions, I can’t recommend this model enough. What are some of the ways that you manage big, complex changes? I’d love to collaborate and discuss.