Assignment for Catherine Owens

Step 4 Communicate for Buy-In

The future is looking bright! You have the entire group revved up like a steam engine ready to roll toward the vision you have crafted. Your vision is specific, detailed, and colorful. It enables your team to see and feel what things will be like when the change efforts are completed. Now that your team is ready, they need to get everyone excited about the change. Chances are it’s not just you and your close team that will be impacted by this change. In order to make change more successful, it’s best to communicate carefully with all the stakeholders to be sure they understand and support the change efforts.

Specific questions or items to address:

Read Step 4 “Communicate for Buy-In” from Kotter and Cohen's The Heart of Change. First, review the feedback you’re your instructor on Part 4. Use any new information you gained from the discussion and feedback from your instructor to revise and improve Part 4 of your project. Next, compile Part 5 of your project, explaining what actions you and your team will take to communicate change with stakeholders of your situation and work to gain their buy-in. Be specific in the methods you will use to communicate: when, in what detail, and to whom.

Once you have crafted your communication strategy, draw up a mock questionnaire to survey a few of your key stakeholders. (The survey you devise is only hypothetical-you do not need to actually survey individuals from your change scenario.) The survey should allow you to gage the success of your communication strategy and identify changes that might be necessary in your strategy. You may find the exercise on page 98 helpful in crafting your own questionnaire. You may also find page 100 helpful in reviewing the key points of what to do and not do when crafting your communication strategy. Be sure your paper touches on the key elements of each as they pertain to your organization.

Be sure to include at least three scholarly references to support your assertions written in your own words. Do not copy word for word from the course text or any other sources. Your submission this week is Part 5 of the final project.

The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded:

• Write between 1,000 – 1,500 words (approximately 4 – 6 pages) using Microsoft Word in APA style.
• Use font size 12 and 1” margins.
• Include cover page and reference page.
• At least 80% of your paper must be original content/writing.
• No more than 20% of your content/information may come from references.
• Use an appropriate number of references to support your position, and defend your arguments. The following are examples of primary and secondary sources that may be used, and non-credible and opinion based sources that may not be used.
• 1. Primary sources such as, government websites (United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Census Bureau, The World Bank, etc.), peer reviewed and scholarly journals in EBSCOhost (Grantham University Online Library) and Google Scholar.
  2. Secondary and credible sources such as, CNN Money, The Wall Street Journal, trade journals, and publications in EBSCOhost (Grantham University Online Library).
  3. Non-credible and opinion based sources such as, Wikis, Yahoo Answers, eHow, blogs, etc. should not be used.
• Cite all reference material (data, dates, graphs, quotes, paraphrased words, values, etc.) in the paper and list on a reference page in APA style.