Announcement meeting: After a decision has been made, the communication to the outside world and the larger community of workers has to be handled with firmness, transparency and candor. Let’s say, your CEO resigned, and you only communicated the news through an e-mail. Chances are……….your employees will have lot of questions about the company’s future, and there is no interactive way to address those concerns. Thus, I would recommend you to have a conference call (or a meeting) with your line managers, before various rumors start churning. And yeah! While doing this, provide them the opportunity to ask their questions. Answers to their questions will make your strategy clear in their minds, and hence, they would be able to communicate that to their employees very easily. Encourage all of your line managers to have a quick sync-up meeting with their employees to communicate this decision with their employees. If possible, have a company-wide hands-on meeting 2-3 days afterwards. Communicate with media: Imagine if your company had a big layoff, and you heard about this news from the media. How will you feel in that situation? In the similar manner, your employees will feel cheated, if they heard this kind of a news from the media, instead from their supervisor. And hence, it is very important to communicate these decisions within your organization, before you go public. News conferences and news releases should be given only after talking with the staff . The staff should not read about it first in the media. You need to also make sure that the media doesn't hear about this news from the grapevine. Thus, you should keep a very small time difference between notifying this news to your employees and the media. Notify other stakeholders: If you are laying off few people, then you might want to talk with relevant governmental agencies to notify them about the decision. If your company buys any kind of an unemployment insurance, then you definitely want to make calls to those insurance providers for notifying them about the situation. If your decision is affecting any of your commitments to your customers, you might want to talk to them immediately. Obviously, you need to notify your customers, suppliers and the community leaders through an e-mail and/or a conference call. And yeah! Don’t forget to define your future plans in your communication. I have seen many notification e-mails with the description of the problem without any clear path for the future. So, do yourself a favor, and define your future path before you go ahead with any of these communications. I hope, these tips will help you to communicate any tough strategic decisions to your stakeholders. If you have any other ideas through which we can communicate these kind of news through transparency and sensitivity, then please feel to share it with me here. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi.

1. How to communicate tough strategic decisions to
your stakeholders?
by Bhavin Gandhi
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to layoff someone? Or imagine yourself in a situation like
Yahoo!, when their CEO resigned and no one knew where the company was going. How would you have handled
that situation as a leader? No matter how hard you try to keep your employees safe from the corporate decisions at
the top, sometimes those decisions will affect your employees regardless of your efforts. So, how will you handle
those situations? In this blog, I will provide you with few pointers through which you can communicate these tough
decisions to your employees very easily.
Announcement meeting: After a decision has been made, the communication to the outside world and the larger
community of workers has to be handled with firmness, transparency and candor. Let’s say, your CEO resigned,
and you only communicated the news through an e-mail. Chances are……….your employees will have lot of
questions about the company’s future, and there is no interactive way to address those concerns. Thus, I would
recommend you to have a conference call (or a meeting) with your line managers, before various rumors start
churning. And yeah! While doing this, provide them the opportunity to ask their questions. Answers to their
questions will make your strategy clear in their minds, and hence, they would be able to communicate that to their
employees very easily. Encourage all of your line managers to have a quick sync-up meeting with their employees
to communicate this decision with their employees. If possible, have a company-wide hands-on meeting 2-3 days
afterwards.
Communicate with media: Imagine if your company had a big layoff, and you heard about this news from the
media. How will you feel in that situation? In the similar manner, your employees will feel cheated, if they heard this
kind of a news from the media, instead from their supervisor. And hence, it is very important to communicate these
decisions within your organization, before you go public. News conferences and news releases should be given only
after talking with the staff . The staff should not read about it first in the media. You need to also make sure that the
media doesn't hear about this news from the grapevine. Thus, you should keep a very small time difference
between notifying this news to your employees and the media.
1 Author: Bhavin.Gandhi@live.com | Contact information: http://gandhibhavin.wordpress.com

2. Notify other stakeholders: If you are laying off few people, then you might want to talk with relevant governmental
agencies to notify them about the decision. If your company buys any kind of an unemployment insurance, then you
definitely want to make calls to those insurance providers for notifying them about the situation. If your decision is
affecting any of your commitments to your customers, you might want to talk to them immediately. Obviously, you
need to notify your customers, suppliers and the community leaders through an e-mail and/or a conference call. And
yeah! Don’t forget to define your future plans in your communication. I have seen many notification e-mails with the
description of the problem without any clear path for the future. So, do yourself a favor, and define your future path
before you go ahead with any of these communications.
I hope, these tips will help you to communicate any tough strategic decisions to your stakeholders. If you have any
other ideas through which we can communicate these kind of news through transparency and sensitivity, then
please feel to share it with me here.
Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi.
Bhavin Gandhi | October 29, 2012 at 9:00 PM | Categories: Announcement meeting, Change Management,
Communication, Communication Failures, Communication with employees, Employee input, Layoffs, Leaders
of Tomorrow, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, Strategic decisions, Tough decisions, Written
Communication | URL: http://wp.me/p103Cm-8r
2 Author: Bhavin.Gandhi@live.com | Contact information: http://gandhibhavin.wordpress.com