Identity & Change

text_identity The demands of the capital markets coupled with intense competitive pressure are forcing companies into a state of permanent change. Realigning group and holding structures, schooling new corporate governance processes, mergers, restructuring, cost and efficiency programmes, strategic shifts and mobilising sales forces are on virtually every company’s agenda.

This poses two key communicative challenges to top management when it comes to internal communications: Firstly, the changes must be made readily accessible and comprehensible to executives and employees. It is not enough to simply announce changes and merely comply with the duty to inform. It is rather about explaining what each change means for executives and employees respectively and fostering a shared understanding with regard to the company’s development.

Secondly, complex, dynamic changes in particular call for regular checks of a company’s intrinsic perception of its business, its work and its own cultural identity. For all the change that occurs, company leaders must be able to answer the question of what makes the company tick and what the company stands for in order to provide points of departure for inward identification and mobilisation.

With its consulting discipline Identity & Change, Deekeling Arndt Advisors brings many years of expertise to the table, enabling clients to effectively meet the special communications challenges posed by corporate change and management processes. We see the inward communication of these processes as a vital top-management tool in shaping and evolving the company. The focus of our consulting approach is deriving the internal communications process from the requirements and objectives of corporate change and identity processes, giving it a strategic framework and shaping it “free of esoterics” – in other words, from a practical business angle. Our experience has shown that one of the most important tasks at hand is to sensitise top management to these challenges. Where required, we network different company sections and departments – such as Strategy and Human Resources – with corporate communications and set up interdisciplinary project groups. Wherever the situation demands, our teams of consultants work locally within the company to be able to respond quickly and flexibly.

Spanning an arc between consulting, concept support and final implementation, our Identity & Change service portfolio encompasses above all the following areas:

Sensitising top management

• Orientation of board chairmen/CEOs towards communicative roles
• Coaching for appearances at internal events 
• Mediation within management boards (notably in cases where interests differ)
• Ghostwriting: speeches, presentations, articles
• Coordinating internal appearances and external media presence

Analysis of business and management cultures

• Research: content and wording analyses with regard to top management statements and key company publications
• Qualitative in-depth interviews with executives and employees
• Defining thought and perception patterns that shape business culture

Agenda development

• Translating strategy discourse into a change story audiences can relate to
• Preparing relevance argumentation for corporate values for day-to-day business and working life
• Developing benefit argumentation for corporate change processesDefining core wording, motifs and messages for internal communications
• Production of presentations, speech and text modules       

Business-related mission processes

• Development work together with board members and executive teams
• Involvement of focus groups as participatory element
• Communications processes along management formats
• Dialogue cascade for communicating within the workforce

Executive communications

• Content creation for executive events and management meetings
• Preparing explanation and identification content for conveying new business models and business strategies
• Empowering management for communications roles
• Workshops, training courses, coaching

Internal campaigning

• Mobilisation campaigns
• Living-the-brand activities
• Development and design of media formats (print, online, audio, TV)

Process management

• Development of project organisation for incorporating different disciplines and interests
• Support for or management of project offices
• Ensuring regular management reports and process documentation