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Part 4: Communicating the Change

An important part of any change project is how the change is communicated to the organization, to the change agents, to the line workers, to the customers, and to the public. Along with media relations issues, communicating change (especially in a publicly traded company) can involve multiple legal and regulatory aspects, as well as personnel and management concerns. Perhaps the single most difficult piece of handling Kotter’s “establish a sense of urgency” is that too many inexperienced or immature change agents read this to mean “panic the troops.” Never do this.

This project piece will have 3 parts:

1. The main part of your project this week will ask you to pick ONE of Apple Inc and Kodak’s change plan, and develop a communication plan for the company. This plan should be submitted by using an excel spreadsheet attachment, setting out the Stakeholders, the timeline of the communication plan, the method of communication, the rationale for why you chose this method of communication, the purpose of the communication and identifying “who” will do the communicating.
2. Pick ONE of the communication pieces which you would have used which is listed in your communication plan, and write the communication in a Word document (either the text or the script, if the communication would have been oral.) If you use any form of communication from templates you find online or in a textbook, be sure to cite your source. Your instructor will grade this based on how well it relates to the audience/stakeholder group to which it is intended.
3. The “real world” aspect of this project is that you will write a 1-2 page analysis of one of the media pieces about one of the company’s changes written (or provided via oral media) by the company. For this section of the project, please analyze any media, news, or other communications which explained the change going on in the organization. Explain in your paper how the company handled communicating the change to its stakeholders.