By Ritvars Mētra, Founder of ReadinessCompassThe CEO recorded a three-minute video about the transformation. It is well made, sincere, and has been watched by 18 per cent of the workforce, most of whom stopped before the end.
In the same week, a shift supervisor told her team in about forty seconds that the new scanning process is slower for a fortnight, that she has argued for two extra people and got one, and that she will be there at 6am on the first day. Everyone in that room can now describe the change accurately.
The source changes the effect of identical content
This is one of the oldest findings in communication research. In Public Opinion Quarterly in 1951, Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss reported The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness. Participants received identical articles attributed either to a high-credibility source or a low-credibility one, and opinion change was significantly greater from the high-credibility source.
Same words. Different messenger. Different outcome. Which means the choice of who delivers a change message is not a courtesy or a governance formality — it is a variable that determines whether the message does anything.
The study is also the origin of the sleeper effect: over time people tend to dissociate the content from its source, so the initial discounting of a low-credibility message fades. The practical reading for a change programme is narrow but useful. Credibility matters most at the moment of delivery — which is exactly when people decide whether to engage, ask a question, or quietly disregard the whole thing.
Rank is not credibility
Organisations default to seniority because seniority signals importance. But credibility, in the sense that changes behaviour, has two components and rank supplies neither reliably:
- Expertise. Does this person know what my work is actually like? A director who has never processed a return cannot credibly say the new returns process is straightforward.
- Trustworthiness. Do their interests align with mine, and will they tell me something inconvenient? A messenger who has never delivered bad news is not trusted with good news either.
The shift supervisor above scores highly on both. She does the work, and she has just told her team something unflattering about the change — that it will be slower — which is precisely what makes the rest of it believable.
| The message | Who should deliver it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Why the organisation is doing this | Senior sponsor | Only they can credibly speak to intent and commitment |
| What it means for job security | Senior leader, on the record | Nobody below them can make the commitment, and delegating it reads as evasion |
| What changes in this team’s daily work | The line manager | Proximity, and they will be there when it goes wrong |
| Whether the new way actually works | A peer who has used it | Highest expertise credibility, lowest suspicion of motive |
| What to do when it breaks | Whoever will actually answer the phone | Credibility here is entirely about availability |
Most programmes get the first row right and use the same messenger for all five.
Being seen to use it beats saying it
There is a stronger signal than any message, and it is behavioural.
In the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Christian Homburg, Jan Wieseke and Christina Kühnl found in a multilevel analysis of technology adoption that when employees observe their superiors using a new system, their own willingness to adopt is strengthened — with adoption by superiors and co-workers positively affecting ongoing use.
Observe using. Not hear endorsing. A manager who praises the new system in a briefing and then asks for the figures by email has communicated something considerably more informative than the briefing did.
How to choose, and how not to burn people
- Ask the audience. “Who would you believe about this?” is a fast question with a reliable answer, and the named person is rarely on the programme’s stakeholder map.
- Prefer proximity for anything operational. The closer the messenger sits to the work, the more their statement about the work is worth.
- Let messengers say what they actually think. A peer reading a script has spent their credibility and transmitted nothing. If they have reservations, the message should include them — a champion who admits the first fortnight is hard is more persuasive than one who does not.
- Do not use a credible person to deliver something they do not believe. This is the most damaging mistake available. You get one poor outcome from the message and a permanent reduction in that person’s usefulness as a messenger, which is a real asset being spent.
- Do not delegate the job-security question downwards. A manager who cannot answer it will either over-reassure or deflect, and both outcomes cost more than the honest answer would have.
The underlying point is that credibility is held by individuals, not by the programme, and it is finite. A change programme borrows it every time it asks someone to speak on its behalf — and whether it is repaid depends entirely on whether what they said turned out to be true.
More on readiness and leadership communication in the Change Readiness Hub, or read why broadcast alone does not move behaviour.