The swansong of the fascist octopus: creating effective change communications

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine why corporations frequently do such a bad job in change communications and succumb to clichéd terminology when communicating change.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach was to identify particularly egregious examples of poor communications and to identify some reasons why change communications seems so difficult for large corporations.

Findings

Poor change communications has a number of sources. Chief of these is the failure to involve employees in the change process from the beginning and to acknowledge candidly that all change processes have losers as well as winners.

Research limitations/implications

The views expressed in the paper are based on the author’s own experience rather than extensively researched data.

Practical implications

While poor change communications will always exist, leaders who understand the natural tendency to use obscure and clichéd language in the field will be able to mitigate its effects.

Social implications

With trust in corporations at all-time lows, one can believe that more effective change communications will help to restore some of the lost trust between capital and labor.

Originality/value

While the clichéd corporate language is the frequent target of critics, there are few treatments of its connection with change communications.

Citation

Hirsch, P. (2018), "The swansong of the fascist octopus: creating effective change communications", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 66-70. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBS-05-2018-0074