and implement. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this virtual morning session about navigating change communication challenges in 2024. We are coming to you today live from sunny Copenhagen in our own studio here in Implement. And my name is Katrine, and this is my good colleague, Jacob. And today we are going to present the key findings from Implement's recent X-ray on change communication. And this is a recurring survey that every year examines the state of change communication in global organizations. So Implement is a consulting firm with about 1700 nerds. Around 30 of those nerds come from what we call a practice or a department that deals with change communication. And change communication. And change communication is basically internal communication about change projects that can be strategy rollouts, mergers, outsourcing, implementation of IT systems, all types of change projects. So when we talk about change communication, have that in mind. Yes. And back to the survey again. Data was gathered in the beginning of this year. And it was gathered through a digital survey distributed to more than 20,000 professionals registered in Implement's CRM system. And we have some more numbers here on our data foundation. We got answers from more than 1,000 respondents representing 49 countries. And we got an almost equal distribution among the different organizational levels. So we got top management, middle management, and employees. And the majority of our respondents are coming from the private sector, with 84% coming from that sector. So with this very solid data foundation, we dare to say that numbers like these don't lie. Well, in fact, when we saw the numbers, we thought that they were lying. We were looking at data from 2014. Had our data been hacked by our competition, surely something was wrong. And here's why. Because it seems that we've always known that there's a gap between management and employees. Those are almost like laws of corporate nature. But it seems that the gap is growing. And as you can see here on the screen, it's actually growing quite significantly. So when we looked at the numbers from 2022, we could see that this was actually getting worse. As you can see here, five percentage points going up. So from 2022 to 2024, if you are part of management, you are more happy about your change projects. Five percentage points up. But if you are not part of management, if you are part of the rest of the organization, it's worsening. So from 2022 to 2024, it's gone down by six percentage points. So it seems that the gap between management and employees is in fact growing. So that's where we take our starting points for this year's survey and some of the insights we want to share with you. Yeah. Because we were actually a bit surprised because here we are. The calendar says 2024. And we are apparently still struggling to close this very well-known gap between management and employees. And this leaves us with the questions. Why is this gap increasing? And what can we do to try to close it? And today we hope to kickstart that conversation in your organizations. So we ask you to lean in and reflect, maybe think a little bit about what kind of conversations are not taking place in your organizations today and what conversations should be taking place. In a moment, Jacob and I will present to you. In a moment, Jacob and I will present to you the key challenges based on our data foundation of change communication today. And after that, we are going to present three very tangible tools on how to overcome these challenges. And here we are. So why is the gap increasing? Well, diving into the data, we saw three overall tendencies that negatively influences this gap. The first one is the sustainability narrative is not motivational. The second one, the visions only live within management. And the third one, leaders communicate too little and too late. And now we're going to double click on each of these tendencies and see what numbers are underneath. So this is the first one. The sustainability narrative is not motivational. Now, as you can see on the screen, it says that 61% find their company's sustainability narrative trustworthy. So this is the good news. This is a shift from the days when you can say that greenwashing speculation seemed to dominate. Well, the bad news is that only 45% find their sustainability narrative trustworthy. motivating. There are more reasons for this. I'll just point to a couple of them. As sustainability competition increases, motivating your employees simply becomes more difficult. So that's one reason. But if I can put it bluntly, if your company's sustainability narrative were a hotel on booking.com with more than 50% not recommending it, I think common opinion would be that you have a lot of people who are not recommending it. I have a problem. And what's even worse is that two out of three managers feel that they can personally contribute to the company's sustainability ambition. But for employees, the number is a poor 22%. So definitely, this is, I think, one of the reasons for the gap widening. Then can you take the next one? Of course. Yes. Well, while the results you just presented, Jacob, go across organizational levels, we see a significant gap when it comes to the feeling of involvement between management and employees. Two out of three top and middle managers feel that they are personally able to contribute to their company's sustainability ambitions. The same only goes for one of three employees. And this is not a unique challenge for sustainability ambition. We see the same challenges when it comes to translating visions and purposes internally in organizations. And this is a problem because in our data, we also saw a strong correlation between how engaged you feel in your work and to what extent your company's purpose is reflected in the internal communication. And speaking of engagement in your work, here we saw a significant gap again. Because while 86% of all top and middle managers feel engaged in their work, it only goes for 67% of employees. Will you take the next one? I will. I can see that we still have participants coming in. I hope the bad news isn't making people go away. No, no, no, no, no. I hope not. Even so, we continue with some more bad news. I promise you we'll have some good cases in a short while. So the third one. Maybe if I could add, because we forgot to say in the beginning that if you have any questions, please type it into the chat. And if we have time, we will try to answer some of the questions. But otherwise, we promise to get back to you after the sessions via email. Sorry, Jacob. Fine. This is one of my negative personal favorites, I think. Leaders communicate too little and too late. I can't see your faces, your beautiful faces on the screen, but I'm guessing that probably a few of you will be nodding. So what does the data say about this? 35% of employees think that internal communication efforts are insufficient. So on the other side, if you are a manager, 35% of your employees believe you are communicating too little. But it gets even worse. An impressive 62% believe you are communicating too late. This results in change resistance and, if I may, millions of lost investment. At least, personally, I get why managers communicate too little and too late. I see it all the time on projects. We want to control change. We want to make sure that we have all details in place. We're afraid to overshare confidential stuff. I think that one is definitely true. But the point here is that handling communication is like trying to squeeze a firecracker in your hand. So if it goes off and the harder you squeeze, you'll get hurt. You'll get burned. It will only make the explosion worse. And we'll get back to this point. But definitely, this is an all-timer. But still, I think the numbers speak for themselves. Yes. And tying all of these challenges together, we seem to have found an underlying problem that relates to the bias that we all have when we take for granted that other people think the same way as we do, that they understand us, and when we are not aware of our own blind spots and the fact that we operate in different contexts. So, in the survey, we asked leaders, top and middle management, to what extent do you believe that your employees know about your ambitions for your team or department? And here, a high number, 79% of leaders said that they, to a large or very large extent, believed that their employees knew about their ambitions. But if we look at the reality, it's only 52% of their employees who know about their ambitions. So, this means that almost half of all employees out there, they don't know their ambitions. They don't know the direction that their team or department are heading towards. So, simply put, we seem to be forgetting a very basic communication rule, which is that we need to understand the communication needs of our target audience. Okay. So, a bit of a half-time here. We have a small survey. Let's hear from you. No right and wrongs. You're all anonymous. You should see the questions on your screen now. Are you surprised to see the gap getting bigger? Yes or no? Do you experience the gap getting bigger in your own organization? Yes or no? Do you feel equipped to handle these communication challenges in your own organization? And if you reply yes to that one, you're allowed to to close the call for today. Yeah. But we hope you will stay anyway. So, we'll just give you a few seconds and we can also see the results as they come in. So, maybe just type in your answers. Yeah. Get a quick coffee. It's not a break, but we'll just give you a few seconds to answer. Like we said before, we were a bit surprised about finding out that the gap is getting bigger. So, we are curious to see if you are surprised as well. Or if it's just us. We can also say that the practice of change communication within Implement has its 10 years anniversary. And we really had some speculation about are we making a difference? What's going on? Are we actually improving? But I think it's maybe it's also got to do with the fact that communication matters more to people today than it did 10 years ago. Maybe so. Maybe so. Yeah. All right. But I can see that the majority is not surprised. Is it 69% is not surprised to see that the gap is getting bigger? 31% says yes, they are surprised. And if we look at the do you experience the gap getting bigger in your own organization? We are waiting for the results just in a minute to check in here. But maybe you are not surprised because you were some of the ones that maybe answered our x-ray this year. And in this way you yourself maybe are part of our data foundation. Let's just see. Oh, do you experience the gap getting bigger in your own organization? Yeah. A staggering 79% says yes. Yes. Okay. Wow. Yeah. And 23% says no. It's not getting bigger. Again, feel free to answer or ask questions. In the chat. In the chat, as Katrina said, we'll actually try to get back to you to try to answer those questions. And I think we're a little short on time. I don't want to steal too much of your time today, but this is definitely something that could be super interesting to be discussing with you, but not with a couple of hundred people on the call right now. So do you feel equipped to handle these communication challenges in your own organization? 43% says yes. 42%. 58% says no. 59% says no. Okay. We got the picture. Yeah. Now we still got a reason to be here, I think. Yeah. But those of you who said yes, you feel equipped, feel free to stay here anyways. We would love to have you here. All right. All right. All right. Shall we move on? Yes, let's do so. And thanks for answering. Yeah. Because now we will move on to present the three tangible tools we spoke about in the beginning. So how do we overcome these challenges? And I know you will present the first tool here, Jacob. Yes. So now I hope it's time for some of the good news. This first tool is dare to be honest and co-create the missing links. Now implement is built on the belief that change can only happen through co-creation. And as soft as that sounds, I think it's true. And there's an amazing number that I won't deep dive on today that is only one third of change projects actually succeed. I remember when I joined implement a story from our managing director and one of the founders, Nils, telling a funny story. So imagine you wanted to change your private life and move to New York with your family. Now imagine making most of the preparations and then informing your family about the profound change a few weeks before taking off. It wouldn't work, right? For change to be sustainable, you need to communicate. And then you need to discuss and co-create with the organization. I get that that is both for some people almost terrifying. It's uncontrollable. But it's the only way to build trust. It's the only way to forge relations. And I think at least the majority of us want our company to be a place where thoughts and ideas can be shared and mistakes and shortcomings are okay. Also, if you're a manager watching this, I think it's fair to say that if you share a little bit of your own vulnerability, if you invite people into the decision room, if you maybe even overshare sometimes, people will accept when you make mistakes as well. We have data on that as well. And they might even like you a little bit more. So the first tool is there to be honest and co-create the missing links. And I invite you to think about all changes in your organization as if those changes were actually some big changes that would go on in your private life and think about how you would handle that. Again, this is a real stinking piece of data, I think. So that's why I brought it. 36% of employees believe communication is only happening one way or being too high level. So one way and being too high level. And I think we even have a word for this. It's called management bullshit. It's something that we might not put in PowerPoints, but it leads to employees thinking that management is hiding behind the fluffy words. And I think we all know those fluffy words. We even did a survey on them once. Agility is one word. Entrepreneurship is another one. And then we try to conceptualize it into something that could be winning 2040 or excellence 2030. But it also leads to employees not being loyal to change, not giving their best. You know the drill. And we know the statistics. Again, one third of all change projects succeed, meaning that two thirds don't. But time for a good story. This is about a Danish company called Danish Standards. You probably know them, but it's a company helping companies and society develop standards. They want to define their own values in a new way. And to reiterate on their unique offering. Those projects, values projects, I think tend especially to sometimes be a little bit fluffy. Maybe also one way. Please are not really sure how to use it. So Danish Standards wanted to do it in a different way. So the process was designed by having a different way. We were having a different way. We were having a different way. We were having a series of conversations. Some of them were one-to-one interviews. Some of them were bigger workshops. But the point is, and I remember a story from the client telling us that after one of those workshops, one of her employees came up to her and said, this was super interesting. Thank you so much for involving me. Now, can I please see the real stuff? Can I see the management slides on this? Can I see what you actually have decided in the management team? And she said back to the employee, but this is the real stuff. What we are building here is actually the real deal. So there's no real stuff behind it. You are producing the real stuff. The point about this is that some of those strategic projects, you've probably been part of them yourselves at some point. They tend to be very stretched, take a long time. It's very difficult to see, are we actually in implementation mode? But these types of projects, when Danish Standards do them, are quite short. Fewer reviews, you have fewer reviews. You have fewer reviews. You have people on board from the very beginning. So it's also a way to speed up things and get to implementation early on. And I think that is one way of doing it. And it definitely is part of narrowing the gap between management and employees in Danish standards. Then there's another one called user company vision in your change story. And maybe you can take this one, Katrine. Yes, of course. Our second tool we present to you here is user company vision in your change story. And basically, we always say that all change projects, they hold a story, the story of going from A to B. And this story helps us understand the change, that we are part of the change that we are part of, and take ownership of it. And if we connect this change story to the greater vision or purpose of our company, then it only makes it stronger. In addition to, if we have the story hold question marks and missing answers, this is not seen as something that is weak. It's seen as an invitation to co-create and engage people around that change, and also encourage them to drive the change and take ownership of it. And then, to show or demonstrate the effect of simple storytelling, we incorporated a little experiment in our survey this year. We developed two different descriptions of the same IT project to be implemented in an organization. And description A, you see on the screen here, is very rational, which is similar to the communication style of most companies today. And here we call the project stakeholder manager 2.0. Very inspiring, we know. And description B is more creative, and we call that the storytelling version, because it holds metaphors. And here we have a compelling name for the project, which is a perfect dancer. So it more creates images in the employees' heads. And then we exposed half of all respondents for description A, and the other half for description B. And I think the numbers here on the screen speaks for themselves. But after reading these two descriptions, 35% of the ones exposed for the rational description thought that the project sounded exciting. It was 59% of those seen the storytelling version, it was 59% of those seen the storytelling version that thought the same, that the project sounded actual. It was was 62%. So we believe that this shows that you shouldn't underestimate the effect of simple storytelling and this is something, this was just a small exercise making a description so this is something everyone can do in their next change project. And this is also something we definitely think can help close the gap. Over to you again, Jacob. I just can't help thinking that when every time I see the statistics, the data that Catrini just showed and if we were to translate those numbers into finances again, millions of dollars in difference So next time someone tells you that storytelling is just icing on the cake or the fluff, please remember those numbers. So the third tool is called lead with conversations and do not fear emotions. Now I touched a little bit upon that in the Danish standards case, but I just wanted to get even deeper into the data on emotions. So what leaders and employees miss the most when we asked them about it, what types of feelings, emotions do they miss the most? It's empathy. And there are also other emotions that they miss. From the top 10, those are empathy. And I'll get into that in just a few seconds. It's excitement. It's passion. Joy, enthusiasm, happiness. I think not your typical corporate words, but even so asked in a corporate setting, in a corporate survey. Those are the emotions that people miss the most. But let's focus on empathy number one. So what we did in the survey was we asked respondents to rate change communication in their company on a scale between mostly rational or mostly emotional. So a lot more data than you see here, but this is sort of the overall conclusion. The result is here on your screen. Now communication being mostly emotional can still be strategic, commercial, future oriented and concrete. But still only 11% if you add four and five rate their change communication as mostly emotional. Now those of you who know a little about advertising, and again, change communication isn't advertising, but we're still human beings. Think about if advertising only how to be emotional. If advertising only had sort of would mostly be on 11% mostly emotional. I don't think those investments would be coming back on return on investment. So again, those are the raw numbers. And here's a funny case. And I think it's funny because it ties into empathy specifically. This is a German retail company. You can see her on the screen. So the real conversation. And the real conversation. You can see her on the screen. She wanted to boost customer experience by boosting employee experience. This was done by virtual training, a virtual training program focusing on what we call real conversations. And I'm not going to get into this, but I think, just think about this, that we had 2,400 leaders trained in a sort of train, train the trainer concept. We had 50,000 employees trained. So the real conversations was about how do you deal with customers? How can you bring your whole self to work? How do you deal with those situations where you're not sure what to do, how to handle a complaint, all sorts of operational stuff, and yet we put it into a virtual training program, and the employee satisfaction was 4.2 out of 5. And the point here is that maybe we should traditionally stop thinking about internal communication being unmeasurable, because this turned out to be a commercial success. And this is, I think, a staggering number. We had an increase in NPS by 14%, and we had an increase in sales by 2%. So again, coming back, lead with conversations and do not fear emotions has a soft side, but it also has a very hard side, a very commercial side. Yeah? Yes. So these were our three tools. The first one, dare to be honest and co-create the missing links. The second one, use the company vision in your change story. And the third one you just presented, Jacob, lead with conversations and do not fear emotions. And what happens if we use all these tools? Well, have we closed the gap then? I think we have. I hope we have just a little bit. I would like to see that in 10 years at least when we have the 20-year anniversary. We hope for better results. Yes, we do. Yeah. And I hope so. Yeah. I really hope so. We know that the changes are difficult, organizations are different. Hi, Katina. Hi, Erik. Hi, Jakob. Hi, Erik. Nice to meet you. Nice to see you. Thank you for sharing the cool insights from the report. I'm sorry I'm interrupting you, but we do actually, before we finish the session, we have one more thing that we would like to show you. Okay. So can I take control? Okay. Please do. Hi, everyone. My name is Erik, and I'm also part of the Change Communication Practice and Implement. But I'm also part of another, a little bit smaller team of communication AI nerds. And I'm here to spend a few minutes on teasing an event that we have that's coming up, actually. Because we are on a mission. Because we are on a mission. And we hope that you would like to be part of that. So let me start like this. Like music, communication can bring us together. It can fill us with energy. And it can move us forward towards a shared purpose. Like music, communication has the power to engage. But like Katrine and Jakob showed us, for most organizations, it doesn't. And these are the results that we have from the X-ray survey. So 30% of employees find internal communication engaging. And when we look at communication from senior leadership, only 50% find their communication engaging. And we believe this is a problem. So what I'm here to talk about. So what I'm here to talk about, and what I want to teach is our way of thinking how to fix this problem. So what we're doing is that we have an event coming up on June 6th, where we will show a product that we have developed and implement that will sort of fix this problem. So we move away from thinking about communication as something that's built on tastes and opinions, and politics, and politics, but move towards the idea that we can actually measure it, and we can evaluate it based on principles and parameters. And then with that knowledge, we can actually improve it. So on June 6th, we will share a product that we have developed. It's AI-powered. And what it does is that it looks at 12 different parameters for communication that is engaging. And then we map those parameters based on top of communication that organizations are having internally. So let me just dive a little bit further into that. We call it the Communication Impact Index. And this is an AI-powered analysis of organizations' internal communication. And so what it does is that it actually quantifies communication. So up until this point, we think about communication internally that's built on taste, opinions, politics, and so on and so forth. But we want to quantify it. And we want to actually look at it from a tool-based perspective. And then finally, with this tool, we can actually get clear and actionable output that can help us drive internal communication in a much more impactful way. So on June 6th, we will run through this tool. So on June 6th, we will run through this tool. You will be able to see it. And hopefully you will like it. Just to give a few examples of what the output is. So when we use this tool, we can get insights like this. And for those of you who are working with communication on a database, this type of information, like data like this, it's very rare that we see that. So imagine you having knowledge about how engaging your internal communication is at hand and what kind of conversations that could start in your team on projects or like from a bigger perspective. So I think this is pretty cool. And we hope that you will join this session on June 6th. It's going to be a session like this, 45 minutes, very quickly. So save the date. I think we are at a point where we would like to say thank you. Yes. Yeah. We hope you enjoyed the session and found the insights super worthwhile. If you want to find the invitation to the event, you can follow the QR code or you can visit the website. But other than that, I think are we going to say goodbye? Let's do so. Thank you very much for tuning in. Okay. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.