How Communication Helps Organizational Change Survive
A practical look at how clarity, trust, ownership, and feedback can help communicators guide people through uncertainty and support lasting organizational change.
Dave Reno
7/2/20267 min read
Last week, I presented When Communication Is the Change Strategy at the 2026 PRSA Midwest District Conference. My sincere thanks to those who attended! For those who weren’t able to make this year’s conference, my session focused on how communicators can help an organization implement lasting change, even when they do not control the decision, budget, or timeline.
My central argument was straightforward: Communication creates the conditions people need to understand, accept, and adopt change.
Change work cannot begin and end with an announcement, a press release, an email, a public meeting, or a social post. These things may explain what is happening, but successful change requires more. People need to understand why the change is necessary, what it means for them, and whether they can trust the process.
People find comfort in familiar systems, expectations, and routines. Change disrupts those patterns and often affects how employees perform their jobs, how customers experience a service, or how residents interact with their local government.
I’m not going to cover the entire presentation here, but for those who might benefit from the discussion, or who were unable to make it to my session, this article considers the central argument and uses the trash and recycling carts pilot program underway in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK), as an example of the framework in action.
Communication is more than the announcement
Organizations often bring communicators into a project or discussion when it is time to prepare a press release, send an email, create a graphic, explain a decision publicly, or, as we so often hear, “blast it out.” Whatever that actually means.
By the time communicators are involved, much of the opportunity to shape the change may already be gone.
Communication is not only how an organization tells people that something is changing. It helps create the conditions people need to understand, accept, and adopt the change.
That requires earlier involvement. Communicators can identify likely questions, recognize sources of resistance, challenge assumptions, and help project teams consider how the change will affect the people expected to adopt it and carry it forward.
Let’s be clear: There are no silver bullets. Plans change, circumstances shift, and some resistance will remain. Still, good communication can increase the likelihood that a change will survive beyond its initial rollout.
What can communicators influence?
Communicators do not always control the budget, timeline, operational decisions, or final policy. Project managers, administrators, engineers, elected officials, and other leaders may hold that authority.
So, what do communicators have at their disposal? Influence. Communicators can shape whether people understand what is happening, trust the process, see an appropriate role for themselves, and have enough information to move forward.
The presentation organized this work into a framework with four conditions:
Clarity – People understand what is changing, why it is happening, and what they need to know or do.
Trust – People believe the need is legitimate, the process is credible, and the organization will follow through.
Ownership – People have an appropriate role in the work and a meaningful opportunity to influence the process.
Feedback – People can ask questions, identify concerns, and share information that may improve implementation.
These conditions do not guarantee that everyone will support a change, but they make it more likely that people will understand the decision, participate productively, and know how to move forward with confidence.
Applying the framework to the KCK trash and recycling carts pilot program
The KCK trash and recycling carts pilot program provides a useful test of this framework.
The city introduced standardized trash and recycling carts and began moving residential collection toward a more automated system. It is easy to underestimate the complexity of this change because automated and semi-automated cart-based collection has existed in the United States for around 60 years. Widespread use began in the 1980s, and cart-based collection became common in many communities around the year 2000.
KCK is different. According to KCK Solid Waste Management staff, for roughly 30 years, the city’s collection model has allowed unlimited set-outs. What does that mean? Residents can place almost anything, in almost any amount, at the curb without using carts, cans, or even bags in some situations. The photograph at the beginning of this article is not an outlier. It shows a real set-out in KCK, and the city’s service provider is expected to collect it.
This model creates all sorts of challenges for the city. Uncontained material inevitably produces litter and debris that make the community look dirty and can clog storm drains, increasing the likelihood of flooding in a community with more than 50 watersheds and two major rivers. It also gives animals, including stray dogs and cats, easy access to household waste, which, you guessed it, creates even more litter. The system also leaves the city well behind on waste diversion. The recycling rate in KCK is around 4%, well below the state average of 33%.
And that’s really just scratching the surface. Residents can place bulky items, such as refrigerators or tires, at the curb every week. One home not far from where I live placed an actual motorboat at the curb for collection – yes, the kind you’d use for waterskiing at the lake. That’s real life, and you can get all of it for about $20 per month.
So, that must be the reason for the change, right? Only sort of. The reality is that the city’s Solid Waste team recognized that when the current contract expires in 2032, the city is unlikely to attract competitive bids for a replacement contract that continues unlimited collection. And even if they did, Solid Waste Staff estimates that continuing the current model could increase the monthly cost to more than $50 per household, which residents will not want to bear. The reality is that the collection industry and the collection model have changed. KCK will be forced to change with it, whether customers want to or not.
To make that transition less abrupt, the city introduced a pilot that helps residents prepare, reduces litter, tests service improvements, and gathers feedback that can inform implementation when the current contract expires.
A cart may seem like a simple piece of equipment to many, but in KCK, the resident feedback suggests the change affects household routines, storage space, mobility needs, and expectations about a service that at least two generations of residents consider normal.
These concerns are not distractions from the project. They are part of the environment in which the change must succeed, and they are things that communicators can influence.
Clarity and trust during a major service change
I mentioned earlier that change creates uncertainty. That’s absolutely true here. To be successful, residents need clarity, trust, a sense of ownership, and a way to provide feedback.
Elected officials are also accustomed to the existing collection model, and they hear directly from constituents who are worried, frustrated, or confused. When residents bring that uncertainty to their representatives, it can spread quickly unless elected officials have the same things residents need: clarity, trust, an appropriate role in the process, and a way to provide feedback. Without those conditions, the change would be much less likely to survive.
This meant communication had to work in more than one direction. Residents needed practical information about the pilot, while the Governing Body needed a clear understanding of the operational reality, the long-term need for change, and the concerns residents were raising.
Mailed materials, public meetings, online resources, direct responses, and resident surveys helped create that shared understanding. They also gave residents a meaningful way to describe their experiences and helped the project team identify questions, service concerns, and information gaps.
Not every concern could be resolved, and not every part of the decision was open for reconsideration. That did not make engagement meaningless. It made honesty about the process even more important. Residents needed to know what had already been decided, what remained open, and how their feedback would be used. The Governing Body needed the same clarity so members could communicate accurately with the people they represent.
This is where the framework came together.
Clarity helped residents and elected officials understand the change and the reason behind it.
Trust depended on honest communication about the challenges, tradeoffs, and limits of the pilot.
Ownership came from giving residents an appropriate role in shaping how the transition was implemented, even though they did not control whether the larger change would eventually occur.
Feedback helped the city identify problems, improve communication, and make informed adjustments.
The Carts Pilot is still underway, and the larger transition is still years away. Following this framework has not made everyone happy, nor should that be the standard for success. It has, however, helped the city move from Phase 1 to Phase 2, with a third and final phase now being planned.
Perhaps more telling, project teams are now receiving calls from residents frustrated that they have not yet received carts. They are asking to be included. That does not mean every concern has disappeared, but it does show that the change is becoming more understandable, more familiar, and, for some residents, more desirable.
That is the lesson from this case study in the slide deck: When communication gives people a clear path through uncertainty, resistance becomes much easier to manage.
Communication cannot be limited to announcing a decision after the important work is complete. It must help people understand the change, help leaders respond with confidence, and create a credible way for those affected to participate meaningfully.
Communicators may not control the decision, budget, or timeline. We can influence whether people understand what is happening, trust the process, see a role for themselves, and know how to move forward.
That is how communication helps organizational change survive.
Leadership takeaway
Do not wait until a decision is final to involve your communications team. Bring communicators into the work early enough to identify uncertainty, anticipate resistance, clarify what people can influence, and build credible opportunities for feedback.
The goal is not to make everyone happy. It is to give employees, customers, residents, and decision-makers a clear path through the change. When people understand what is happening, why it is necessary, and how they can participate, adoption becomes more likely.
About the presentation
When Communication Is the Change Strategy: How Communicators Drive Adoption Without Authority was presented at the 2026 PRSA Midwest District Conference. The presentation explores how clarity, trust, ownership, and feedback help communicators support organizational change, even when they do not control the decision, budget, or timeline.
The full presentation also includes two additional public-sector case studies involving organizational accreditation and utility rebranding. Download the slide deck PDF.