It's just talk...

I mentioned the importance of the informal ‘background talk' during change in my last post.  I've had a few people asking me about, so thought I would expand.The term ‘background talk' emerged as an expression within my earlier doctoral research on communication and organizational change, when one of the employees was explaining how the ‘real' communication of change occurs in the background of the change.By this, I understood that he meant the ways that the employees made sense of the changes in light of little formal change communication, or how they responded to the official and formally sanctioned messages of change.This ‘background talk' revealed key narratives within the business, for instance what they were focusing on (eg economic rationalism, versus heroic quest to save the business).In my research, the informal talk (gossip, grapevine, rumors and mundane conversations) occurring in the background of the change efforts was taking precedence over the formal communication of change. With formal communication lacking, employees relied on the background talk to make sense of what was happening.The background talk can be a very important barometer of change where you gauge the success, acceptability, and uptake of your change initiatives. It is a place to establish where there may be a lack of understanding that will impede your change efforts. And it can also be the site of better ideas.The benefits of engaging with the background talk are numerous, so it makes it all the more surprising that managers usually do everything but engage with the informal conversations going on around them at an employee level.In one study, researchers Crampton, Hodge,  & Mishra (1998) found that despite a widespread perception from management that there should be some form of engagement with the grapevine (for example, monitoring, feeding information and correcting misinformation), a staggering 92.4% of organizations had no policy to deal with the grapevine, and managers and organizations were usually reluctant to take an active role in managing/controlling informal communication networks.This is a surprising insight, as industry research suggests as high as 70% of all organizational communication occurs at grapevine level (DeMare, 1989). It strikes me that the communicator who consciously engages in the background talk of change has considerable opportunity to shape and influence the conversations.It may not be ‘ just talk'...(For more on this attached is a research paper where I expand on the benefits of Engaging with the Background Talk of Change)