Internal comms is hard. Especially when you find yourself up against colleagues that really don’t like what you’re saying. That’s why it’s especially important to be able to look at the issues from the other side and understand what arguments and pain they’re going to cause, so you can decide how to address that and appeal to employees.
EY is a classic example. As one of the big four it is incredibly successful but was finding itself more and more hampered by conflict of interest rules over its two main divisions: auditing and consulting. The decision to split the company in two was made (internally known as Project Everest) with the belief that it would allow both to grow and accomplish more separately than together.
Partners in the US (especially) were, to put it mildly, not keen as they feared it was going to cost them an awful lot of money and they couldn’t see the potential opportunity since they were only focused on the short term. They kicked and screamed so hard and loudly that it eventually made it impossible, leaving EY in the same difficult position it was in before.
This wasted about a year and a half and around $600m before the lesson was learnt and the exercise called off.
— Know your audience
