The British have a way of making organizational change sound like a weather forecast — inevitable, somewhat gray, and best faced with a cup of tea.

Faye Scadden, who serves as head of marketing, campaigns and brand at Network Rail, finds herself preparing for what she describes as "one of the biggest rebrands that you can imagine." In approximately 18 months, Network Rail — the government-owned company that manages 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges and tunnels, and 19 of Britain's largest railway stations — will cease to exist. In its place will rise Great British Railways, a consolidated entity that will absorb the train operating companies being nationalized by the Labour government and emerge as one of the largest organizations in the United Kingdom, with roughly 100,000 employees.

(Second only to the National Health Service, for those keeping score at home.)

The rebrand, Ms. Scadden said in an interview with The Drum, will touch "thousands" of assets — uniforms, personal protective equipment, signage, vehicles, and the infrastructure trains that maintain the railway itself. The cultural shift may prove equally demanding. Network Rail's marketing team currently focuses on behavior change campaigns (discouraging trespass on the tracks, for instance) and managing the reputational consequences of delays. Under Great British Railways, the team will take on something it has never done: selling tickets.

"Once we join GBR, we'll be much more commercial," Ms. Scadden said.

The transition presents what organizational consultants might call "change management challenges" and what everyone else might call the difficulty of telling people who have spent entire careers at a company that the company will shortly not exist. Network Rail employs 40,000 people, many of them related to one another, in what Ms. Scadden described as a family atmosphere where "everybody knows each other."

The Railways Bill must still pass through Parliament, and many details remain unsettled. In the meantime, Ms. Scadden said, the communications strategy is to keep talking — even when there is nothing new to report.

"If you say nothing," she noted, "there's a danger that you create a void, and then people will potentially make up their own narrative."

It is a principle that applies rather broadly.

Original story published in The Drum: "Network Rail’s Faye Scadden on driving behavior change and the GBR rebrand | The Drum"