Whenever you kick-off a large scale organizational change initiative you are going to need people to sponsor it, to lead it and to execute it. In plain English: you will need to staff a project team with skilled people and you will be asking of them a more than average commitment and a considerable effort. On top of that, there is no real guarantee that your project will be successful; projects are like life: you win some, you lose some.
In my professional life as a consultant I go from SAP implementation to SAP implementation and they resemble the above characteristics: a need for high commitment and effort and no certainty of success from the beginning. Therefore, one of the most fragile project phases in the program initiation; when the program is not really an established reality yet and the team is not yet calibrated as an ‘institution’ with some gravity. Staffing the project with internal people is fairly difficult at that stage and it requires some marketing to do so: that is where you need to think of Nespresso.
As I have stated in previous articles on the subject of ‘marketing’, there are a lot of elements from marketing that you need to apply inside of your company as you are about to endeavour an organizational change project. The branding of your project is not just about using common templates, logo’s and stationeries; most of all it is about program identity.
People wonder what will happen when they quit their old familiar job to join the program: how will it influence their career?, Will this be a leverage for their career or will they be on a sideway? In the first case, they will be thrilled to join the project (‘must do’, ‘definitely need to be part of it’, ‘don’t wanna miss it’); in the latter case they will ask for a firm down payment before they even consider joining the program.
Program branding makes the difference here. The Nespresso branding strategy shows us exactly what to do in this case: instead of drinking coffee, Nespresso drinkers belong to an exclusive club. They don’t just drink coffee, they drink one of the 12 blends. Maybe you are Nespresso drinker yourself and then you know what I am talking about: you don’t drink just any coffee; you drink Nespresso. You are part of a community; you share an exclusive taste for adventure. And whenever you have visitors you are quite proud to let them pick a blend from your Nespresso box.
Organizational change programs need to brand themselves alike: making sure that people are not ‘sent to’ the program as some sort of punishment, but rather that they enter an adventure that they just cannot afford to miss; a unique experience which will leverage their experience and career (regardless of the outcome). It is my contention that the project identity that you convey (i.e. ‘how you talk about the organizational change initiative’) makes the difference between membership as a punishment and membership as an opportunity.
Just like Nespresso, what else?
