Digitalisation, restructuring, new ways of working – change is part and parcel of everyday business life. Yet one bitter truth remains: studies show that the vast majority of change projects fail. The main reason? Poor communication and a lack of employee buy-in.

You can develop the best strategy, but if your staff do not understand the need for change or do not feel emotionally invested in it, the transition will become an uphill struggle.

Common mistakes in change management communication

Traditional change communication often relies on PowerPoint presentations crammed with text and diagrams. This frequently results in confusion, resistance and frustration. The most common communication mistakes are:

• The ‘why’ is missing: Employees only see the specific measure, not the overarching purpose or the urgency of the change.
• The ‘how’ is unclear: the steps involved in the transformation and the role of the individual are not understood.
• Emotional distance: the communication is too matter-of-fact and fails to address the fears and hopes of those affected.

The dialog picture as a compass for change

A dialog picture is a unique tool for rethinking change management communication. It transforms abstract transformation plans into a shared, emotional image that gets all employees on board.

This is how the dialog picture creates successful alignment:

1. From the past to the future: The picture visualises the current state (the challenging starting point), the path of transformation (the clear steps and milestones) and the target state (the motivating vision).
2. All roles are visible: Every employee can see their own position and their contribution to the overall success in the diagram. This fosters a sense of identification.
3. A basis for dialogue: As the name suggests, the dialog picture serves as a neutral topic for discussion. It enables you and your teams to discuss complex issues without getting bogged down in PowerPoint presentations. Questions and concerns can be pinpointed directly on the image.

The effect: The dialog picture reduces complexity and makes the changes visual. It transforms resistance into understanding and actively promotes a willingness to take action.

Your benefits for successful change

If you want your next transformation to be successful not only from a technical perspective, but above all from a human perspective – then harness the power of visualisation to get your staff on board and guide them safely through the change.

CULTURE CHANGE

Sparkasse Hannover, one of the largest savings banks in Germany, began to address the process of cultural change as early as the beginning of 2017. In several workshops, the questions "how is digital change changing Sparkasse Hannover?", "what does Sparkasse Hannover stand for in the future?" and "what common goals do we have?" were discussed from both employee and customer perspectives and then visually translated. Low interest rate environment, stricter regulation, high competitive pressure from banks and non-banks - this situation is the new reality in the banking business. It is not the circumstances that will change, but the institutions that will have to adapt to the new circumstances. Without strategic and operational adjustments, interest-based business models will not work in the low interest rate environment.

In order to maintain their market leadership position in competition with new providers from the FinTech sector, traditional credit institutions must recognise the digital demands of their customers at an early stage and integrate them into their products and services. Digitisation plays the central role in this present and future challenge.
With the dialog picture, Sparkasse Hannover has created a basis for taking a look into tomorrow from a foundation of strength in the here and now. An image that stimulates internal dialog about the future.

TRANSFORMATION PLANT HANOVER

Process optimization, strategy, cultural work and good communication are key to the VW Nutzfahrzeuge plant management Hanover in leading the way to a successful future. In the past, strategy and transformation processes were often accompanied by powerpoint "battles".There were numerous charts that tried to make it as comprehensible as possible what goals the company wanted to achieve and how it planed to get there.

Now the company wants to go other ways and has developed a vision for the future together with Goldpark and DIALOGBILD. On the one hand, the picture emerged in an intensive process, on the other hand, the discussion about the things that are important to the board in the picture led to a common understanding and also made it possible for different perspectives to be discussed and brought together.

This helps the Hannover plant to communicate its way into the the future with a common voice.

Thanks to the close cooperation between Goldpark and DIALOGBILD, the dialog picture was used for all events, informations and formats that relate to the transformation as well as to reflect the developments in the transformation process.

STRATEGY 2030

With the EPEUM® culture program and the Strategy 2030 project - Our path to a successful tomorrow - Sparkasse Oberhessen has consistently set out on the path toward securing the future of its savings bank. The transformation towards a new, transparent and positively lived corporate culture is in full swing. Its future project "Strategy 2030" is essentially about developing an idea - a vision - today of what the savings bank could look like in a decade's time in order to continue to be successful. In the five identified topic areas of "Private Customers," "Corporate Customers," "Operations & Processes," "Human Resources," and "Steering," the respective interdisciplinary and cross-hierarchically structured project teams have started work and demonstrated: We have considerable potential for improvement - in our organization, in our processes, in sales and in increasing our earnings.