How Did I Get Here: Change Communication Expert, Dr. TJ Larkin

by Kelly Kass

The client was ICI. The task: improving their communication. Just once catch – how to convince the British-based company to contract someone entirely new to the Consulting field?

Fresh onto the scene in 1985, Dr. TJ Larkin (www.larkin.biz) was a then guest-professor at Australia's Deakin University who were trying to establish a consulting branch of the university. When meeting with ICI at their Melbourne office, TJ opted for an candid approach when they inquired about his level of experience.

“I said, ‘this is it, I’ve never actually done this before; this is my first time.’ I think they were so taken aback by the honesty of a consultant saying I’ve never done this before, that they hired me. I was completely shocked,” he remembers.

TJ was sent to a large chemical plant in Sydney, and thus a month-long stint was born. While interacting with ICI employees, he found the exchange to be extremely educational due largely in part to his mostly academic background. Suddenly the Oxford and Michigan State University Graduate went from reading up on studies on organizational communication to being thrusted into face-to-face communication with employees. Not bad for a visiting professor from the State University of New York at Albany.

“I had never seen any communication in a company. So I was very excited about it. I enjoyed it a great deal. I wrote my university at home and said that I was never coming home; I was going to become a consultant. And that’s what I did.”

So that’s how it all started for the man who is probably the most respected and knowledgeable practitioner in the field of change communications today.

When TJ Met Sandar

While working in Australia, TJ met and married his wife, Sandar, whom he credits for helping his distinguished career take off. While TJ was out building the Consulting business, she kept her own job working for the Long Term Credit Bank of Japan to help pay the bills.To drum up business, TJ created an effective marketing approach which started to get some buzz.

“I sat down and wrote a paper called Communicating Change. Everything I’ve written has been called Communicating Change,” he admits. “It was about ten or twelve pages and I just sent it to the fifty largest companies in Melbourne, Australia. And they liked it. We got phone calls; we got work. They said, ‘come in and talk to us about communicating change.’ So I went in and talked about communicating change.”

Together, TJ and Sandar have gone on to develop a distinguished practice in New York that has seen a prestigious list of clients such as NASA and General Motors. In fact, they now have so many clients that they’ve given up on a permanent residence.

“We have these black trunks and we load them up and go client to client because our average stay at a client is two to three months. We usually go to a Residence Inn or some other type of place and we set up and stay there,”

Approximately one-half of the Larkin client-base still stems directly from the 1994 book that sky-rocketed them to fame, Communicating Change. Interestingly, many of those clients had never even met TJ; nor had they attended his lectures.

---

Click to play Kelly's interview with TJ

---

The Power of Truth

Among the events where TJ might be called in to assists companies with their communication are mergers, restructuring and downsizing – not exactly popular topics for employees. So how can Managers most effectively handle the change communication? According to TJ, honesty is the best policy.

“The first thing I tell them is don’t soften the blow. Softening the blow is kind of like telling a little white lie to people. The last thing they want when they’re really nervous and tense and when they’re hearing a lot of rumours, is a little white lie.”

TJ suggests avoiding misleading phrases like:

• “It’s going to be business as usual.”
• “You’re still our primary asset.”
• “The employees will always be looked after first."

Even when opting for an honest approach with your employees, a diminished morale during a company shake-up still comes with the territory. However, as TJ points out, it doesn’t all have to lead to turmoil.

“What increases morale is when you include people in the communication. What really destroys morale is when you start to exclude people. Bring them in; tell them you’re looking at changes; you’re not definite but you think the changes are going to be negative and there’s going to be cost-cutting but you don’t know how much. Bring them with you during this time. Human beings don’t handle exclusion. They handle bad news fine; they don’t handle exclusion and isolation well. Put your arms around your employees and tell them it’s a difficult road but you’re going to bring them with you. Don’t push them out and at the end deliver a bad news bombshell.”

TJ relishes the opportunity to go into companies and help communicate the change, particularly when employees are resisting.

“The more employees are resisting and the more critical the change, the more the client needs you. I love that feeling of being needed, of helping, of making a difference."

Perhaps nothing made him feel more needed and respected than during the standing ovation he received after lecturing at a 2005 IABC Research Foundation Luncheon. TJ’s face lights up when reminiscing about the event which brought six hundred Communicators to their feet. But the day took on an even greater meaning for him – something a lot more personal.

“My mother had died three months beforehand and my father came to the lecture. It was his first time out of the house since she died and it was very emotional. About halfway through the lecture I really felt I was lecturing well and that the audience was with me. Sometimes that’s a really hard thing since sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I thought this audience is really hanging in there with me. So I lectured well, particularly through the second half of it. To my shock, there was a standing ovation and my father was sitting in the back row crying his eyes out. It was just a beautiful day to have a standing ovation. All the planets were lined up right for me. I lectured well, my father was there, the audience was great. I’ll never forget it.”

Everyone’s A Critic

In spite of the overwhelming response to that lecture, TJ’s presentation wasn’t immune to criticism. Shel Holtz questioned TJ’s stance on the sole necessity of communication to front-line employees by immediate supervisors. In a 2005 blog post responding to the lecture, Shel writes,

"As is the case in most of the other advice he presents, Larkin made huge leaps from questionable research to astounding conclusions.”

Shel’s other beef concerned TJ’s views on the Web which TJ feels is best for immediacy and the retrieval of information. Shel faulted his lack of reference to the

“Web’s multimedia capabilities or the collaborative nature of message boards, blogs, wikis, or other social media tools.”

TJ didn’t bat an eyelash when I referenced Shel’s critique, nor when acknowledging the other batch of critics who question his views.

“We actually have a position – our position is: when communicating a big change, the most important receivers are the supervisors, the most important channel is face-to-face and the most important topic is future effects on the local work area. Once you have a position, people know where you stand, then you can have critics. If you have no position, then there’s nothing to criticize. I find it very helpful, I always learn something from our critics. And I find it flattering that people find something to criticize. It’s good for business and I appreciate it.”

As a whole, TJ says, the general perception in America is that the CEO is the most credible person in an organization – not the front line supervisor – which sometimes makes it challenging to sway people toward his beliefs. Across the pond, however, it’s another story entirely.

“I actually find Americans harder to work with even though I am American. The reasoning behind that is Americans create false, naïve stories about their companies: ‘employees love working here, we’re a team, we’re a family.’ The British and Australians are much quicker to realize that it’s not the case. The British and Australians are more honest, they admit there are a lot of people who don’t believe Senior Management. As a result, I find them easier to work with.”

And the data he’s collected can back up his claim, TJ points out.

Social Media and Change Communication

As a blogger and video producer, I, too had to raise a few questions during my one-on-one interview with TJ. Sure, face-to-face is the best route to take during change communication, but what about the power of blogs to create conversations between bosses and employees? And wouldn’t having a sounding board promote a sense of healing and unity for employees who otherwise might be lost in a sea of change? TJ stands by his views.

“I’m certainly not anti-blogging. My experience with companies is that when the communication becomes permanent either in print or video, it becomes stifled. When communication is oral and spoken, executives open up. If you get a group of people at a table and get execs talking, you’ll often find them inspiring, honest and relevant. Then when you get execs to write something for the corporate magazine or you get them to do the corporate video, they don’t approach it the same way. It’s sensible from their point of view because they don’t know what’s going to happen to this print document or where this video is going be playing. The consequences make them much more cautious and guarded,” TJ explains.

According to TJ, not only is face-to-face communication essential for behaviour changes in a company, it also leads to a more honest interchange and better credibility.

“People can say things about their companies in small, closed oral conversations that they can’t put onto a publicly available (or privately) available blog, company magazine or video.”

Print vs. Video

TJ has long been a supporter of using Print to communicate highly-detailed, complicated new ideas. But in this day and age where Video continues to take the Web and intranets by storm, should Print still be the preferred medium during a time of rapidly declining attention spans?

“A large part of what people do is giving information. I think video is really good for that. The distinction I give my clients is that informing is okay, but at some point, you need behaviour change. Don’t think about media when you think about behaviour change; think about how you’re going to get that supervisor to walk the line and get their employees to act differently,” TJ advises. “The communication is all on the informative side when media comes into play. When you come into the behavioural change side, it’s wrong to think you can make a video or a website or a blog that employees can read and then go out and do their jobs differently. That’s an inaccurate assumption because media doesn’t drive that behaviour change. You have to get it clear in your head when you’re trying to inform and when you’re trying to change. The goals you have determine the media that you will use.”

Another inaccurate assumption TJ points out has to do with downsizing. Whereas many see it as a negative, that isn’t necessarily the case. He is quick to defend large companies, stressing the attractive packages that often come with downsizing.

“When you work for a big company and they let you go, they often let you go very generously. They often let you go with a very large lump sum payment,” he notes. Many employees, TJ says, even wind up starting their own businesses and contrary to the belief, received appropriate notice of their dismissal. “I think there’s an image the general public has that people show up for work, they get a pink slip and out the door they go. I think it’s been exaggerated.”

Communicating Change in His Personal Life

So does TJ follow his Communication advice in his own life? The answer is a resounding yes, especially when it comes to his ten-year-old daughter. Going from client-to-client in multiple cities is never an easy task when you have a young child who’s already gone through five different schools (she’s now studying with a tutor). That’s why TJ is always up front about the family’s travel itinerary.

“We tell her if we get these kinds of contracts then we’ll move, if we don’t, we won’t move. We try to keep her informed like the way I think people should treat their employees. We give her good news and bad news. She always has a rough idea of where we’re at. She knows all the uncertainties and she knows that life isn’t definite. She also knows that she will be included,” TJ says.

While others might find such a work/life balance to be a challenge, TJ actually recommends it since he is able to work consistently while still seeing his family.

“When Sandar and I first started to work together, all my friends said ‘this is a bad idea, you’ll never be able to survive.’ But I don’t agree with that. Because we do all this travel, it’s been great. We all go together. It’s a family unit.”

When working on a particularly demanding contract, Sandar’s parents often join them to help care for their grand-daughter. On the rare occasion when they are not on the move, the Larkins can often be found in their apartment in Mexico.

So what’s next for the Change Communication Guru? For a man who admittedly has no hobbies, the answer comes as no surprise: keep working, of course.

“I really love my job, I love working. Every day I wake up and I’m really thankful to have a job that’s interesting. Change is a great field; the clients are very different. I’m constantly having to learn new businesses, whether it’s finance or mining or oil. I find it really stimulating,” TJ enthuses.

And don’t expect to see him on a golf course any time soon.

“I figure my career is half over. I’m fifty-five years old. I’ve got another forty years in me. I love work and I’ve never had any intention of retiring. I look forward to forty more years of work ahead of me.”