On change, trust, and conversations that matter

Episode title: On change, trust and the Ikea effect

Guest: Simon Cavendish
Host: Chared Verschuur
Duration: 35 mins
Listen on: SoundCloud

What we cover in the episode

• Why internal comms is change comms
• The listening trap: what leaders get wrong
• The IKEA effect and how to make change feel co-created
• Treating change as a project, not an endless blur
• Communicating tough transitions with respect and transparency
• What “good” looks like when everything’s messy
• The evolving role of communicators in a world shaped by AI, hybrid work, and transformation fatigue

Resources mentioned

• The IKEA Effect (Norton, Mochon & Ariely, 2012)
• Kanter’s Law: “Everything looks like a failure in the middle”
• Change models: ADKAR, the Change Curve
• IABC certifications: CMP and SCMP

About Simon

Simon Cavendish is a senior internal and change communication consultant who has worked with organisations in over 20 countries. He is Chair of IABC EMENA, a former UK & Ireland Chapter President, and a strong advocate for communication that’s strategic and human.

Connect with Simon on LinkedIn.

Simon Cavendish on trust, change and the IKEA effect

Welcome to the IABC EMENA Podcast, where we explore the impact and future of communication. I’m your host, Chared Verschuur, and today I’m joined by Simon Cavendish, a senior internal and change communication consultant, longtime mentor in the field and current chair of IABC EMENA.

Since 2007, Simon has worked with organizations in over 20 countries across four continents, including Ikea, Deloitte and the National Grid. His work spans business transformations, system implementations, regulatory shifts, crisis communication and more.

As a former IABC UK and Ireland chapter president, and now leading IABC EMENA at the regional level, Simon brings both a strategic and human-centered lens to leadership, to communication and change. Today we’re diving into what it really means to lead through change and why internal communication is not just a nice to have, but a strategic imperative. Simon, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:28] Simon: Thank you very much, and thank you for that intro. It sounds terribly grand when you say it how you did, but yeah. Pleased to be here.

[00:01:34] Chared: Thank you. And before we jump into strategy, let’s get personal. The reasons we start and stick with internal communication say a lot about us, I think. So what sparked your interest into this space and what’s keeping you here?

[00:01:50] Simon: Good question. So this is relatively far reaching and started quite early on. For my eighth birthday, my parents bought me a manual typewriter. It was an Olivetti typewriter my dad very famously at the time said, oh, it will be a waste of money. He’ll never use it. He was a little bit skeptical ’cause they were really expensive. and I just fell in love with it and I used it constantly. I’m very pleased to say my dad was wrong. And I kept writing, making up newspaper stories, magazines, short stories, the whole thing, and that continued throughout my childhood. English was always my best subject at school. Loved reading, loved writing, and so I was always gonna study English at university. You can see a theme here. And at universities where you really learn obviously how to digest lots of material all at once, how to theorize, how to debate, how to critique. All of these things are very useful when it comes to internal comms. So when I graduated I was looking for a job, basically any job, like a lot of other graduates. And I fell into a role at a company that was then called PowerGen, but then became part of Eon which is large German owned energy company. And I was based in the UK. In Nottingham and when I started working in a call center job, I had a very good boss who, whenever I talk about this, I always name check.

She was called Pauline Morning, and she really looked after me and said, what do you want to do with your career? And I’d seen the internal comms and the messaging that was coming, and I to do that. I think I can do that. And I think I can do that really well. I want to write. And so she helped me through a number of jobs on the way, stepping stones to get into an internal comms role.

And I just fell in love with it immediately. I was very people and culture focused, able to really build with a great team, loads of experience to learn how to do comms really well. I realized in later years just how far advanced they were. At Eon back in 2007. So I really got to learn with the best. And then my next job was working with Transport for London for the London 2012 Olympics, working on the comms for that. And that was when I really got into the change comms space. And yeah, I’ve been hooked ever since. I’m not far off 20 years in it and I can’t imagine doing anything else, certainly for the foreseeable.

[00:04:10] Chared: So that’s a real nice story, right? Because it shows how important our first managers are in our career if they do it well, and if we’re lucky enough to have those leaders in our lives. So it shows that you’ve worked across so many contexts as well. What’s one leadership lesson you keep coming back to?

[00:04:30] Simon: The one that really stands true is that leaders have to be good communicators and a large part of what we’re doing is obviously supporting leaders to be good communicators, but being a good communicator or a great communicator means being a great listener. That’s the thing that always comes through. You don’t have to have all of the answers. I think leaders sometimes feel like they do. You don’t. What you need to be able to do is to actively listen and actually you don’t have all the answers, but your people might. And if you listen and if you engage and if you come in, if you humanize the relationship, you can actually learn way more rather than that kind of old school view of. We tell you what you need to do. And it’s seen as a one way, a one-way conversation and things are thankfully changing a lot, but you’d be surprised. There are still some places that have quite a traditional way of doing things. But yeah, I think a leader who is a great listener always be successful and will always bring their people with them.

That point about difference between leaders and managers. Leaders have followers. You almost can’t call yourself a leader. You have to be called a leader by others because you have followers. Otherwise it’s, yeah, it’s more of a manager role. So listen, and you’ll get the followers.

[00:05:44] Chared: So listening is obviously a very important skill in this area. And especially when we’re dealing with change. In our earlier conversations you’ve said that internal comms is change comms. So how connected are these two?

[00:05:59] Simon: I think they are very connected. Internal comms is change comms. Yes. I’ve always said that because if you think about it. Whenever you are communicating, we’re trying to create a change, know, change in behavior or to improve an understanding awareness, to enable somebody to be able to do something better or differently. It’s all change. I think change comes with a big C is, people see it as this big scary thing where we have a change comms and change program, but basically it’s about, with a big C informing and engaging employees around organizational change specifically. So a transformation, a new system rollout, whatever it might be. But I think actually it’s very empowering if you think about all internal communications. Certainly the vast majority as change comms and driving change, it’s a really good filter when you think about what you’re doing and where the value is that you are adding. If it’s not going to change something or raise awareness of something, why are you doing it? and we constantly get called in to ask to do many things. So having that filter and looking at it through that lens is really helpful. The reason why so much change fails is because people, we don’t involve people in the right way.

We don’t engage with our people in the right way. We don’t have leaders who truly listen to their people and take their thoughts, opinions, and views into account. So I think the really successful change that you see is when you have a strong connection with your people and a strong understanding and alignment with them around what you’re trying to do.

[00:07:44] Chared: And if I may put forward a different argument around that, I think that also a lot of communication is around trust building so that when the change comes, then we’re ready. We’re ready for the people to be taken on board with us. What do you think about that?

[00:08:02] Simon: I think that’s very much a part of it. If you trust your leaders, you are going to go on a journey with them, be more comfortable. Without knowing all of the answers, you are gonna feel that they’re going to listen to you. If you don’t have trust, you are not going to succeed, and you can build trust without having all the answers. You just need to be transparent. You need to be credible, and you need to do what you say you’re going to do.

[00:08:26] Chared: That is a really good one. And what are the biggest misconceptions people have about change communication, you think? Do you still experience this and what do you find yourself correcting most often?

[00:08:38] Simon: There are many misconceptions, but if we tackle the main ones, the main one for me is that change is do we say? The the only constant is change. Change comms and change management should not be ongoing. should be a finite thing. It has a beginning, it has a middle, and it has an end. So it has the state that we’re in now. the change that then happens and it has the future state. And I think it’s very easy in the world that we live in to say, change is a constant, and it is true that things are constantly changing and a lot of things are changing all at once. But each of those things is its own defined things. So I think when you. Think about change as a constant. It’s very hard then to know when you’ve been successful, if you see it as a finite thing. So you are rolling out a new system. Use that as an example. You have system you’re currently using. have the process of the rollout and getting people on board and understanding and training and everything else. then you have the state that you’re gonna have with the new system in place being used, old system removed, and then you. Bucket that into sections and think about it very logically. if you just see it as, oh, we’re, we’re rolling out 20 things. I’ve worked with clients who are having wholesale business transformations, and there’s a big difference between transformation and change. Transformation is truly transformational. You are fundamentally changing the way that your business operates rather than change, which is that rolling out of a system. I think, when you’re in that position, you still have to, within a transformation, have various change programs. Otherwise, it’s too big. It’s overwhelming for not only your employees. It can be overwhelming for leaders, it can be overwhelming for the teams that are having to make this change. So that beginning, middle, and end, current state and future state is really important. That’s a big one for me.

The other one we’ve already touched on a little bit is that it’s very different from internal comms. It’s more similar than different, I think. But we’ve talked about that. the other one for me is really around old people say nobody likes change. It’s not true that people don’t like change. It’s true that people don’t like badly managed change, they don’t like change being done to them. By other people, and that’s perfectly reasonable, right? We’re not anti-change if it’s managed well. It’s unfortunate that back to that, that a lot of changes is poorly managed and that’s not intentional. Clearly nobody wants change to fail, it is that issue around when you, particularly in an organization where you have long serving employees who’ve been through change a lot. Some people say, oh they’re very cynical. Is it cynicism if it’s based on personal experience? I don’t know. It is probably justified, how do you bring people who all been through that process where you’ve seen badly managed change and that makes you think, I don’t like it. We naturally to resist change because the status quo is great. I know how to work within it. I know how to be successful within it. It works for me. Change is uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t like it.

And I think there’s another one as well about man change management ending after a rollout, sometimes organizations seeing it as just in intu comm as a system change. So the number of times I’ve worked with people where obviously you get very technical IT teams, technology teams who are focused on a tool and they think we’re just replacing a tool with another tool. not. You are changing people’s roles. They have to work differently. You are potentially impacting them in a multitude of ways.

So when people try and see change as well, it’s a system change. Yeah, it’s a, people change every change, whatever you’re doing is going to impact your people. And sometimes you see organizations underestimate that and assume that it’s really just about changing a system. So it will be nice and simple. All change is complicated ’cause it’s got people in it and we’re complicated and we have needs and wishes and all the rest of it. So I think those are the really big ones for me.

[00:13:06] Chared: So you mentioned two things that I wanna focus on. One is that there’s a start, middle and end. So should we treat change communication as a project? And then the other one is that change being done to people.

So how do you create change where change is not being done to people, but with them?

[00:13:30] Simon: Yeah. So approaching change like a project, I mean it Yeah, it is, because normally the change when it comes to change comms, it’s around a project that is happening, be it system or a process or whatever. I think you, you do have to, and the main benefit of doing that actually is that when there’s something called Canter’s Law, I believe it’s Elizabeth Canter, but I could be wrong about her first name, and she basically said, in the middle of change, everything looks like chaos. Everything looks awful because you are no longer at the beginning, which you knew and understood, you are not yet at the end where everything is settled.

You’re in this mess in the middle, and it’s always messy. Change is messy. so I think part of the benefit of seeing something like a project with a beginning and a middle and an end is that you can have very clearly defined milestones as you go through this, where you reach a point where you can celebrate the success you’ve seen so far, even if you are not yet at the end point. I think a lot of the time people are driving for the finish line and then they think to celebrate. Just like also, sometimes people will wait until the end and measure, and if you are waiting to measure at the end, you’ve already gone wrong. It’s, that’s not how it works, but, so I think having a project mindset not only makes it easy for you to ingratiate yourself with your fellow change management and business professionals but it helps you to structure. Comes in a way that really does, have those milestones, have those points where you can recognize progress without necessarily having to wait until the end.

And your point about people feeling done to that you just have to involve people in the change. Nobody wants to be told it’s gonna be like this. You have no say in it. And that’s, and that’s the way it’s going to be goes back a very long way. So come with me a little bit down at memory Lane. But back in the 1950s, they there was something introduced that was supposed to help American Housewives.

It was the 1950s, so it was Housewives free up their time a little bit to make things a little bit easier. And that was Instant Cake mix and instant cake mix. Had everything together. All you had to do was mix it up, bake it. And you had a cake. And they launched this product thinking going to love it ’cause they don’t have to spend time making anything. And it absolutely tanked. Nobody liked it and they were trying to work out why. And they realized it was because it removed the sense of accomplishment because was all there and all ready to go and all you had to do was bake didn’t have any skill or proficiency to demonstrate in what you were making.

So what they then started to do was to remove certain ingredients from it. So if you buy a pack now, which you can get, you still need to buy eggs that you add, you still need to add milk or whatever else. I haven’t baked for a little while, which is terrible. They started to remove the product so that you felt like you were more invested. you contributed more to the process of creating that cake and then all of a sudden it was hugely successful and everybody loved it. it’s about involving people in that process, in that change.

And this comes through into one of my favorite things called the IKEA effect. And that is around, basically if you look at the Billy book case, which I believe is the most successful, successfully selling product that they have, everybody either has one or has had one at some point. and the IKEA effect is basically around being able to demonstrate competence. So they had two was flat pack and they asked people to build it, then another one came ready made. they put the two side by side, they asked the participants of this study, which one would you value more? What would you pay for the one that you made, and what would you pay for the one from the shop ready made? everybody said they would pay more for the one they had built themselves because it was down to More invested in the game because you had spent time. And I think that’s really important to remember when it comes to change management and change comms is people are not only going to feel more invested because they’ve had to say they’ve had an input, but they’re also going to value it more. At the end, they’re going to value the outcome more, so it’s really important. Yes. You can’t always involve everybody in everything. That’s the other mistake. People think, okay, therefore I have to involve everyone in every decision that we need to make. You’re not going anywhere if you do that. find things that you can.

So an example, if you’re going through an office move you can look at, okay, can we ask colleagues to name the meeting rooms? Can we ask them to help us choose? Furniture style, whatever it may be, and these things sound really small, but they impact the environment that they’re going to be moving into. It can help people feel more ownership, more relaxed about the change because they feel like they are being involved. And it also balances out that fear you can have of change because you have some control over what’s coming. So I think that’s, I. Really the key thing about involve people in the change don’t do to them. So a bunch of leaders deciding something without consulting their people, they don’t know what they don’t know. People who are actually doing the jobs can be really helpful. Talk to people, listen active listening back to that point, to really understand and involve them in the process.

[00:19:18] Chared: So involvement is really key, and we hear that all the time that you have to involve people and ask them, consult them.

But what if change is about, you know, budgets, small budgets becoming smaller, so there will be layoffs. How can leaders approach that kind of change?

[00:19:37] Simon: Yes, that’s a sadly very relevant change that a lot of people are seeing at the moment. I think with a change like that, you have to embrace uncertainty to a degree, it’s easy for me to say, you need to be transparent. You need to, share everything with colleagues. You need to be very upfront and you do. But it’s back to this point of credibility and doing it in the right way, in a respectful way, particularly when it comes to something like job cuts, downsizing, whatever you want to call it. you have to respect the individual. Remember that there are people at the end of that you are making. And I’ve often found myself in a room where understandably, people think in terms of numbers and not people. and I’m there to remind them that we’re talking about actually, individuals with families and lives and everything else that, that you are working on. I think when it comes to how, how do you lead through that?

How do you manage that change? It’s about being transparent where you can telling people what you can when you can. Having that really regular cadence where even if there’s nothing new to say, you tell people, there’s nothing new to say, but we’re still working through this. I’ve seen it a few times, is people you have a project team sitting in a room and nothing is said until everything is worked out and every little detail is finalized. And then they want to run because the project team and the senior leaders have been sat in a room for the last six months working on this, and they now want to implement to see the benefits, and they want to do that as quickly as possible.

But your people haven’t been going through that for the last six months, so you need to take them on the journey. So sometimes it’s a case of saying, look, we need to slow down a little bit here. I know you know when you’re ready to go and you want to do it in three weeks, or whatever it may be. lots of things to consider like employment law, and that varies massively by country, but just about doing what is right to your people or right by your people and being respectful as you manage through that change.

And I’ve done office closures and moving people around and it’s never nice, but I always think if I can come out and say at the end of it, we did it in a respectful way leaders really standing up and being accountable again if they’re trusted. That’s going to make a massive difference. But being really transparent does make all of the difference.

It’s not to change anyone, people don’t like that whether you are leaving or you are what they call a survivor. So you are, it’s as hard for people left behind to see people leave as it is for the people leaving. but you can do that in a re respectful way ou honor the process and you do it in the right way. Then again, it will all come back to listening, engaging. You don’t have to, you can’t always involve ’em in every decision. You are making it for a financial reason or whatever it may be, you can communicate it clearly, consistently. You can give them the opportunity to share their views. You can respond to that and just do it in a very open way.

[00:22:46] Chared: I really like what you said about doing it in a respectful way where you honor the process and you do it the right way, and you do it in a human way. And so how do we know for sure that communication is working during a transformation?

[00:23:01] Simon: There’s it depends on the transformation, but there’s 1,000,001 ways you can, look at something and understand it. But what I tend to do if you look at a new, replacing a system or a business process, you are going to have the way things are.

Now you have decided that you need to change. Which would suggest that the way things are now is not the way that you want them to be. So something now isn’t working, but you’ve got all of the data around how that process is working. Currently. will then have, at the end, however a new process is working, where hopefully you are going to see that change and the improvement in business performance.

It might be more sales, it might be, quicker customer service, or more efficient turnaround, whatever that is, you’re gonna have the start point and the end point. the points along the way can be a mix of things. So again, you would use those business metrics performance. ’cause that’s, frankly, that’s what your leaders are gonna be talking about. So you need to be able to speak their language, understand financials, understand what really matters. How does your business make money and how does the change help them. Make more of it. Yes, there are many other reasons for business, but ultimately it is about making profit. And then looking at how, if you’re going through a change and you’re having training or you’re having workshops, whatever it may be, you can look at things like, what are the questions that you’re getting?

How many questions are you getting? people clear? they have the information they need or are there questions just outside of the realm of what you’ve already considered with things like an FAQ document or whatever it may be. I think rooting everything in the business performance will always help you.

And comms can’t always claim full credit for improvement in performance, but you can say you’ve played a part in it. If it’s been a system change or something like that where you look at an engagement survey, let’s say, and your employees are more likely to recommend the business as a place to work.

That’s showing a positive improvement in terms of the transformation because people are going, okay, things are better as a result of what’s happened. You can claim a part of that as a comms person because metrics are always very hard. And sometimes people go, oh, it’s too hard, so I just don’t do it.

You can’t do that. And you can’t just look at vanity metrics like clickthroughs and intranet views. That’s a part of it, but it’s not really showing any change in behavior. So you, it’s a bit messier and a bit harder to do, but you’ve got to look at how are we driving that performance? How are we changing behavior? How are people showing up? And how is that different from how it was before?

[00:25:40] Chared: And one change that you’re going through right now is that as a newly minted chair of IABC EMENA, you are stepping into a role that blends strategic vision with community building. the profession itself is evolving rapidly as well. We’re experiencing a lot of transformation, AI, hybrid work, and shifting employee expectations. These are reshaping how we’re leading communication in real time. And as a new chair, what do you hope to bring to the role? I.

[00:26:09] Simon: Oh, good question. A newly minted, I feel like a coin. That’s a that phrase. For me it’s really about, firstly, it’s about continuing the great work that Monique did last year with, and we did as a board where we like really focused on our members and providing the value, the connection.

The thing about IABC. Has always been for me, it’s about the, I, it’s the international side of things. We can connect with people all over the world, build really strong networks. You can come together on a local level in a city with fellow comms pros, or it can be at an international event like the conference in Vancouver. There’s so much opportunity and that connection is really what we’re about. We build connection, as you said, we build communities and I really want to continue that into this year. It’s something that does make us stand out. So much content is available online these days and it’s freely available. There’s lots of, you know, companies and apps and all the rest of it that are putting out content. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep doing that. We will. We will keep focusing on the topics that are really important to people. And AI particularly came up a lot at World Conference. But, and really the focus on people centered change.

And that’s really where, we will keep pushing, but ultimately it is bringing people together. You can have a small group of people come together, but the quality of the conversation the insight and the thoughtfulness is really what makes it stand out. So for me it’s quite simple and I had a similar approach when I was the president for the UK and Ireland chapter, which is put on lots of great content and connection, which will hopefully encourage more people to sign up and join, become members so they can benefit from everything that has to offer. and ultimately that will make us an even more appealing prospect for sponsors and bringing in sponsorship and bringing in funds to be able to then invest that back into members and make sure that we are, able to provide even bigger events. That’s where I would like us to be. And, to really make sure that at the end of this year we maintain what we currently have and continue to grow in new cities and establish a few more communities. That would be fantastic. The success of the communities has been incredible and they are so sufficient and that, the feedback is, is phenomenal.

So I would love to, to get a few more in, in the next year.

 That’s a good question. I think it will always come back to certain things. So there’s a lot of talk at the moment about AI taking jobs, people afraid of what’s that going to mean? And yes, there will be things that will change as a result of AI because it does make it easier to create comms plans to write whatever it may be.

And there’s a real, a very real question there that needs to be addressed around how that affects entry level roles and people trying to break into the industry. And the way that I did where my first job was basically writing internet articles, that was how I cut my teeth. So I think entry level roles will look different.

They will still exist, but they just won’t look the same as they used to. I think it really, the reason why I am confident that we’re all still going to be very gainfully employed is because there’s a lot of things that can’t be done by technology and never will. You will still need internal comms, change comms.

You will need people who can advise leadership and really understand the businesses that they’re working in already mentioned about, understand the language of your business, understand how you make money, be able to advise. AI is very unlikely to stop somebody from doing something stupid. It would, okay, yes, I can help you do that, and off it goes. We, quite often come up to situations where, because we sit across the whole organization, I sometimes think even don’t necessarily realize how much we know. And it’s a really privileged position to be in, but we can know things that are going on that if we’re in the right can bring it up and tell them, oh, hang on, you shouldn’t do that. Because I’ve been hearing from this group over here that they’re not very happy about whatever, and if you do this, it, you know it, it won’t work. They would not have that insight necessarily if we weren’t there and being able to speak truth to power, as they say. And seeing it as we are partners. We are of requests, we are not a post box. We are here to add real value. That is not going to change. And I know we have, every year there’s always what’s the top trends for the next 12 months. And I know that Annmarie Blake talks a lot about this.

I’m in firm agreement with her. Basically it doesn’t change very much each year. The same things are the same things. There’ll be little tweaks around the edges, but ultimately it’s the skills that we bring will be valid for years to come. And that will be the insight. It will be the ability to put the brakes on when needed to be able to challenge, to question, and to join dots for people.

And, pull a picture together that otherwise might not be seen. I find myself quite a lot with requests that are, can we promote this? Can we promote that? I’m like, okay, how does this all fit together? How does the event you want to promote help us to advance the business? And then you start telling a very different story when you can have that connection and help your employees to see how it all fits and how they can contribute to that. So I think those are not going anywhere anytime soon. Those will still be the skills that we need.

[00:32:14] Chared: So you mentioned questioning, partnering, listening, and dot connecting. Those are the skills that are necessary for communication professionals to thrive in this changing world. Finally, we want to leave our listeners with something practical and inspiring, especially those starting in this area. So what’s one piece of advice you’d give to a communicator just starting to work in change.

[00:32:41] Simon: I would say trust your instincts. So if you are just starting to work in change. You probably already have been just not formally. If you’ve been working in internal comms, you’ve been working in change, trust your instincts. You do already know how to do it. We have a habit of overcomplicating things and making things sound very grand. And there are lots of models and, there’s the change curve and there’s ad car and all of these things are genuinely very helpful. But. They’re not mysterious. You can learn about them and you’ve been through change yourself so you know how you respond to change. So people are different, but just remember people first, not systems, any change is about people. So if you keep that front of mind yeah you’ll be fine.

[00:33:31] Chared: And if our listeners would like to connect with you, where can they find you or follow your work?

[00:33:38] Simon: You can find me on LinkedIn. I am on threads if you wanna find me. I’m also on Instagram, but that is pretty much me just posting pretty pictures. It’s not so much work related, but you’re very welcome to follow me if you want to.

[00:33:50] Chared: Is there anything else you’d like to add? A parting thought challenge or call to action?

[00:33:56] Simon: Well, a call to action for IABC members and those who might be thinking about joining. If you want to talk about IABC related anything. Certification related. If you’re interested in the communication management professional or the strategic communication management professional certifications, I’m always happy to talk about that, or indeed change.

If you’ve got any questions or any advice on what you would like to see from the board this year, please reach out to me. I’m always happy to help. If I can connect you with someone that might be useful, I’d love to do that as well. So yeah, do get in touch.

[00:34:33] Chared: Thank you Simon, and thanks for joining us on the IABC EMENA Podcast. If you enjoy this conversation, share it with a fellow communicator and check out our previous episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. We look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn or on our website iabcemena.com. That’s a wrap.

This is Chared Verschuur podcasting for IABC EMENA.#