Rule #1 for org announcements: no surprises
A simple ritual for smoother organization change announcements.
“Oh no, they were [surprised/mad/frustrated] by the org change mail you just sent.”
These are words that you’d rather not hear when carefully crafting an organization change. It sounds obvious, but the details of how you announce changes to your organization can make a significant impact on how a change is received. Sloppy org roll-outs lead to fear, uncertainty and doubt (aka FUD). While smooth org-rollouts often lead to a optimism, alignment and improved team velocity. Recently we made some small org structure changes at Coda, and I put together a brief template to show how we do this process as a management team.
The idea is to start by being clear about a few things:
Subject: what’s the thing you want people to take away?
Target date/time: given the other communications that need to happen, when’s the ideal time?
Content: how can we clearly and succinctly explain the why behind the change?
Then, gather feedback from key stakeholders before sending out to a broader audience. Org changes often have many moving parts, so you want to make sure the communication comes across as clearly as possible. You’re looking for feedback that will preemptively address the fact that your audience is likely to have different context, concerns and questions. Make sure you get feedback from:
Stakeholders — anyone who was a key stakeholder in the organization change.
Mentioned — anyone who is mentioned directly in the announcement.
This last one is super important. The cardinal rule is — if you're mentioned in an org announcement email, you should see it before it goes out. No surprises.
After you send, additional actionable feedback often comes in from the broader organization. So you want to make sure you’re gathering that feedback and assigning people to follow-up on any important details.
You can also apply the same ideas to any broad announcement where it’s important that the details of the communication are reviewed prior to sending, like a launch announcement or customer communication. Hope this helps make any future organization changes you make run a little smoother.
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