Some people are uncomfortable with all the change in the business.

Growing companies tend to be full of uncertainty and ambiguity caused by constantly changing employees, job demands, structures, systems, products, and markets. Uncertainty can and does create problems as people worry about how the changes in the organization will affect their future with the company.

Productivity can diminish greatly as people spend more and more time speculating and discussing the latest rumors they hear through the “grapevine.” Leaders often assume that employees will simply trust that management knows what it is doing. A lack of information, however, causes people to fill in the blanks with their own, mostly negative, interpretations of what is going on.

To ease this growing pain, focus on opening and maintaining clear lines of communication with the entire organization so everyone understands what is happening and how it will impact them. The only way to prevent your organization from creating its own stories about what is going on is to manage the story proactively, frequently, and through multiple channels.