Marketing

Everyone knows the Marketing department. But isn’t it for helping sell the businesses goods and services or promoting the agency’s work? That is, isn’t it external facing? Yes and yes. Still, the marketing department is where you will find the people that either do themselves or work with external professionals to persuade customers, citizens, and so on. This is important for change management because so much of change management is persuasion—of fellow employees.

People are people all the time. We don’t stop being consumers just because we are at the office. That is, we don’t change how we interact with the world. If we are receptive to some special recipe of constant repetition and logic and flattery and humour and bright colours and constant repetition everywhere else, we will be receptive to that same recipe at the office. Full stop.

It’s not orthodox in most organizations. I, however, strongly recommend a marketing perspective on whatever actions change management will take to make its case and communicate its desired behaviour changes internally.