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What is Change Management?

Change management is the application of a structured process and set of tools for leading the people side of change to achieve the desired outcome. Change management is:

• • • A process used by project teams to manage the system, process and organizational changes
    • A leadership competency for enabling change within an organization
    • A strategic capability designed to increase change capacity and responsiveness

Why is Change Management Necessary?

Various studies have shown that the likelihood that projects meet or achieve their objectives is directly related to change management effectiveness. One study with 327 project leaders (the Business Process Reengineering Benchmarking report) indicated that failure to manage the people side of change, and the associated employee resistance, was the top obstacle to project success.

The report cited employee resistance to change five times more frequently than any other project obstacle. Prosci’s correlation data from over 2,000 data points and nine years shows that initiatives with excellent change management are six times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management. By simply moving from “poor” to “fair,” change management increases the likelihood of meeting objectives threefold.

Effect on adoption and usage

Applying change management can directly impact adoption and usage. Specifically, it can affect:

• • • • • Speed of adoption: how quickly the organization adopts the change and how well the project stays on schedule
        • Utilization rate: the overall level of participation and ultimate utilization of the new processes, tools and job changes
        • Proficiency: how well employees perform in the new environment and if they are achieving the expected performance levels

Effect on project objectives and ROI

When change management delivers targeted levels of adoption and usage, the probability of achieving business objectives, on time and on budget, increases. When the people side of change is poorly managed, projects fall behind schedule, fewer employees engage in the change, and proficiency levels are lower; projects deliver a lower ROI or in some cases fail completely.

Key Roles for Succeeding in Change Management

The key roles in change management include:

Primary sponsor

The primary sponsor is the individual who authorizes and funds the project. This person is usually in control of the resources, systems and people that are affected by the change. The primary sponsor usually has the authority to determine the scope of the change and its timing.

Sponsor

Sponsor refers to any senior or mid-level manager with responsibility for employees or systems impacted by the change. In this context, a sponsor is defined as any business leader whose support and active engagement are necessary for the change to be successful. Sometimes the term „key stakeholder” is also used to refer to this role.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship refers to the activities expected by employees, and therefore required, of a good sponsor. These behaviors include active and visible participation throughout the project, building a coalition of sponsorship with peers and subordinates, and communicating directly to employees.

Sponsor coalition

The sponsor coalition is the collection of sponsors within the organization. The affected employees report to sponsors within the sponsor coalition. A strong sponsor coalition is a good indicator of project success, whereas a weak sponsor coalition is a good indicator that projects will fall behind schedule, miss objectives, or fail completely.

Managers and supervisors

Managers and supervisors with employees affected by the change play a key role in helping their employees through the transition process. These managers and supervisors are the preferred senders of change messages related to how a change personally impacts employees.

Stakeholders

All sponsors, managers, supervisors and employees affected by the change are stakeholders. In many changes, external partners, vendors and even customers may be considered stakeholders. They all have a stake in the outcome of the change.

Project leader

This role is assigned to the individual who has the overall responsibility to implement the project. The project leader has direct day-to-day control over the project team, project management activities, and all resources associated with the project.

Change management leader

This role is assigned to the individual who creates and implements change management plans for a project. Change management plans include communications, sponsorship, coaching, training and resistance management.

Understanding the Change Management Process

A holistic approach to change management on a project addresses both the organizational and individual change management processes.

Organizational change management

Organizational change management is a process for designing and implementing change management activities that affect broad groups of employees to enable adoption and proficient usage. These activities include:

Phase 1: Preparing for change

• Readiness assessments, risk assessments and strategy development
• Identifying and preparing change management resources
• Creating the necessary sponsorship model and preparing sponsors to effectively lead the change

Phase 2: Managing the change

• Preparing a communications plan for the project
• Creating a roadmap for all key sponsors of the change
• Developing a plan to help managers and supervisors coach employees through the transition
• Creating a training plan
• Developing a resistance management strategy
• Integrating change management with project management
• Executing the plans to drive adoption and usage

Phase 3: Reinforcing the change

• Collecting and analyzing feedback, auditing compliance, and measuring performance
• Identifying root causes to resistance and addressing those points of resistance
• Celebrating successes and transitioning the project over to day-to-day operations

Individual change management

Individual change management manages change at an individual level, with each employee. Successful individual change involves five elements that serve as the sequential building blocks of individual change. When all five elements are present, the individual has successfully transitioned through the change.

• This change model is referred to as the Prosci ADKAR® Model and consists of:

  1. Awareness of the need for change
  2. Desire to engage and participate in the change
  3. Knowledge on how to change
  4. Ability to implement the change
  5. Reinforcement to sustain the change

Organizational change management is used to enable successful individual change management. And when individuals successfully transition through the change, then the organization is able to achieve its objectives.

Enterprise change management

Enterprise change management is the structured and intentional deployment of change management across and throughout an organization. Beyond change management effectively applied on individual projects, organizations with mature change capabilities create an infrastructure to make the management of change an organizational capability and a strategic, competitive advantage. Institutionalizing change management practices, processes, capabilities and competencies make effectively managing the people side of change a core competency and cultural value of the organization. Building an intentional and repeatable strategy for change deployment enables an agile and change-ready organization.

Summary

Change management is about enabling employees to successfully transition through the change to:

• Increase the likelihood that the change will occur successfully and that the objectives of the change will be realized
• Capture the people-dependent ROI of the change
• Manage employee resistance to change
• Build change competency into the organization

Gain the tools to successfully apply change management to a project and communicate the role of change management to others in your organization by attending the Prosci Change Management Certification Program.

 This blog post was originally published by D. Scott Ross in Prosci blog.

When we think of change management, we typically envision the actions that we take – communicating, building sponsorship, managing resistance, etc. However, one of the keys to successfully managing change is the use of an individual change model. Understanding how an individual experiences change is critical for change management activities and interventions to be successful.

REASONS WE NEED AN INDIVIDUAL CHANGE PERSPECTIVE

An individual model for change is necessary for organizational change management to be effective. It defines the outcomes or results that organizational activities are trying to achieve.

It is critical because:

• Successful organizational change only results when individuals are successful at change – How valuable is a new process that no one adopts? How valuable is a new web-based tool that no one uses? How valuable is an ERP if no one is using it correctly? The answer to these questions is the essence of the fact that organizational change is only successful when each impacted individual makes their own successful transition. In fact, a poorly managed change can actually have severe adverse impacts. I remember hearing a story about a man working in a warehouse who was being told by the system that he could not ship product, despite the fact that it was sitting in front of him on the shelf. A customer was being deprived of a product because someone upstream had not used the new ERP system correctly. Any organizational initiative that impacts how people do their jobs is only as successful as each employee at making the personal change.
• While we are all different, as human beings we respond to change fairly predictably – At first glance, your reaction might be „oh no, everybody is unique” – and you are correct. However, the way we as human beings respond to change is actually very similar. For instance, it is basic human nature to be curious about why a change is happening and what has resulted in the need for change.
• An individual change model like ADKAR provides the key building blocks for successful individual change (and hence successful organizational change) – Following the two principles above, we can directly connect an individual change model to achieving organizational goals and objectives. What has sometimes been considered the „soft issues” is actually at the center of meeting the goals our projects and strategic initiatives. An effective individual change model, like Prosci’s ADKAR model, describes what successful change looks like from the individual’s perspective.

RISK OF NOT HAVING AN INDIVIDUAL CHANGE PERSPECTIVE

There are a number of risks to attempting change management without a solid foundation in how individuals go through change. This is perhaps one of the biggest risks of ‘recipe-driven’ change management approaches. We cannot think of change management as merely checking the box and moving forward. Because of principle 1 above, we must focus on how well each individual is moving through their own personal transition for change management to be successful.

Two major risks of trying change management without an individual change model::

• We do the activities, but do not have the appropriate focus on the individuals undergoing change – The individual change model defines the outcome we are trying to achieve when we implement change. In the absences of this individual perspective, project teams run a significant risk of completing activities but not achieving results. In the face of significant resistance, a team might say „but we sent 43 communications” or „everyone went through the training program”. This is evidence of doing change management activities without a focus on what the activities were trying to achieve.
• We have no way of knowing if we have succeeded – Since the individual change model describes the desired outcomes, it also establishes a framework to know if we have been successful. Without the individual change model, it is impossible to tell whether or not change management activities are achieving their desired results.

APPLICATIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHANGE PERSPECTIVE

The ADKAR model has proven to be so effective that it is taught in Prosci’s 3-day certification, 1-day managers program and 4-6 hour executive sessions. Our clients have been very successful when they get each of these very different groups thinking about change in terms of ADKAR.

Speaking practically, there are several main applications of the individual change model:

• Provides focus to organizational change management activities – Individual change models provide focus for the numerous change management activities we complete. For example, it is commonly accepted that communication is critically important to succeed at change. But what should we communicate about? In the absence of an individual change management model, project teams resort to telling others what they have been doing, describing the solution in detail. ADKAR reorients the focus of efforts from „communicating” to „building awareness”, or from „training” to „building knowledge”. This seemingly subtle shift in perspective is what differentiates mediocre change management from exceptional change management. It is what enables project and change teams to truly achieve results.
• Gives direction measuring effectiveness and for corrective actions – How do we know if our change management activities are working? For change management teams, an individual change model like ADKAR allows them to collect data from different groups across the organization to 1) understand how effective their organizational change management activities have been and to 2) take corrective action. For example, if the team determines that awareness of the need for change is low, then adjustments can be made to the communication plans and sponsor plans to correct this situation. If, on the other hand, knowledge and ability are low, then adjustments to training and coaching plans can be made. Without a focus on the outcomes described in an individual change model, it is not always clear what actions should be taken to correct a situation. The individual change model provides a way to assess where the individuals in the organization are related to the change and how to help them move forward.
• Gives managers and supervisors a real tool to use when coaching employees – An individual change model provides managers and supervisors with a tool for managing change at an individual level, the essence of coaching an employee through change. If we want our managers to have effective conversations with employees about a change, then we must equip them with the tools they need. Teaching them about ADKAR and how to use it with their employees prepares them to fulfill their role in making change successful.
• Is an effective tool for both project and ‘non-project’ changes – Not all change in organizations take place in the context of a project. Each and every day, employees, supervisors, managers and senior leaders face change. An individual model of change gives them a tool that can be used to manage these ‘non-project’ changes.

This blog post was originally published by Tim Creasey in Prosci blog.

Do you know how to prepare for change?

The Prosci methodology begins not with change management application but with taking the necessary steps to understand the change and the organization itself before you create your change management strategy. Below are the key activities you need to undertake at the start of project (and change management) planning.

Key 1 – Identify Change Characteristics

Each change in your organization will be unique. As a result, the magnitude of the change management activities will be unique as well.

When sizing your change, make sure to include the following areas:

• Scope of the change
• Number of individuals and groups impacted
• Type of change
• Amount of change

Each of the above factors will influence your change management strategy and dictate how much change management you need.

Key 2 – Assess The Organization

Some organizations are ready, willing and able to change while others are change resistant. Assessing organizational attributes is the second key to developing a high-level change management strategy.

When assessing your organization, it is important to understand the following organizational attributes:

• Organizational value system and culture (adaptability to change)
• Capacity for change (how much more change the organization can absorb)
• Residual effects of past changes (past failures may result in „baggage”)

Key 3 – Analyze Audience Impact

Changes impact groups differently. Some may experience a high degree of change while others experience only minor changes. Each group within your organization is unique and will have unique challenges requiring special tactics appropriate to that group.

When preparing your change management strategy, it must be adapted after understanding:

• What type(s) of change will be felt by the different impacted groups and to what degree
• How many employees are in each group
• What unique organizational barriers exist for each group (i.e. past experience with change, leadership challenges, etc.)

This audience impact analysis allows customization of your five plans: the communications plan, sponsor roadmap, training plan, coaching plan and resistance management plan.

Key 4 – Assess The Project Risks

Each change project has different attributes and therefore different risk factors. The project risk will be a function of the organizational attributes and the change characteristics. You should communicate this risk assessment to the primary project sponsor and use this information to determine if special change management tactics will be required for your project. Using the information you’ve already gathered, use the grid below to assess risk.

Key 5 – Assess Resistance and Identify Special Tactics

Special tactics in your change management strategy may be required given your change and your organization. You may be able to identify special circumstances or possible resistance before the program even begins. This is called Proactive Resistance Management and is one of three avenues for managing resistance.

Have all the keys? Gather all the assessments and data you have compiled from the keys above and combine them into a strategy:

• Change characteristics assessment results
• Organizational assessment results
• Risk assessment
• Recommendations for special tactics

Without these keys, your change management work cannot be tailored to the unique needs of your project.

This blog post was originally published by Tim Creasey in Prosci blog.

How do you know if your change management approach is set up to succeed?

Using the Prosci change management methodology as a foundation, they have created an easy-to-use Checklist for Your Change Management Approach you can use on your initiatives and changes. In this checklist, you will examine these elements of your change management strategy:

• Change management planning
• Sponsorship
• Communication
• Coaching
• Resistance management
• Training
• Reinforcement

Use this checklist (link for download at the end of post) to prepare for upcoming initiatives, analyze progress on current initiatives, and discuss change management with others.

Change management planning

A structured approach to change management was cited as the number two contributor to success in the Best Practices in Change Management – 2016 Edition. Further analysis of the data shows a direct correlation between the use of a structured methodology and change management effectiveness, and change management effectiveness is directly linked to project success.

Keys to implementation:

• Use a structured and planned approach
• Ensure that you have the necessary resources
• Begin your change management activities at the beginning of the project, not as an afterthought or add-on

Sponsorship

Sponsorship was cited as the top success factor in each of the last nine benchmarking studies, over twenty years of research with more than 4,000 participants from 82 countries around the world. In the latest study, over half of all participants rated their sponsors’ understanding and execution as less than adequate.

Keys to implementation:

• Don’t assume your sponsors know what it means to be an effective sponsor of change – there are often gaps in sponsor knowledge
• Remember that sponsorship is more than signing a name at the bottom of a project charter; it involves active and visible participation with the project team, employees and other senior leaders

Communication

Communication will be critical for building awareness and desire to changes. Frequent and open communication was cited as the number six critical success factor in the 2016 Edition of the Best Practices in Change Management.

Keys to implementation:

• The most effective communication is face-to-face, so don’t rely exclusively on ‘broadcast’ forms of written and electronic communication
• Involve both key senders of change messages:
  • Senior business leaders for messages about the impact of the change on the organization
  • Immediate supervisors for messages about the impact of the change on the individual and What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)

Coaching

The role of immediate supervisors during change is critical – they are the preferred sender of messages about how the change impacts an individual, and they play a central role in identifying and managing resistance. Middle managers were cited as one of the main resistors to change in the last benchmarking report. Engaging them as coaches helps to address some of the main causes of manager resistance.

Keys to implementation:

• As with sponsors, don’t assume that managers know what it means to be an effective coach – even some of the best managers are not effective change managers without the proper knowledge and support
• Give coaches the information they need to be the senders of key messages about how the change will impact individuals

Resistance management

Resistance to change by employees and managers has been cited as the top obstacle to project success in the last nine benchmarking studies. The most common reasons for resistance are not tied to the solution you are implementing – they are often related to the current state and the (mis)information in the organization.

Keys to implementation:

• Be proactive about managing resistance by identifying what it might look like and where it might come from
• You can often prevent or mitigate the most common causes of resistance by simply thinking through your change management activities earlier in the change lifecycle

Training

Training is a vital part of building knowledge on how to change and ability to change. Many change practitioners are heavily involved in the training portion of a project, so rely on best practices when planning and facilitating your training.

Keys to Implementation:

• Focus on planning and design (including training needs assessments and involvement with impacted audiences), as this was listed as the top success factor for project-specific training
• Make sure your training is delivered at the right time, when employees are in the knowledge and ability stages of the ADKAR Model

Reinforcement

If people revert back to the old way of doing things after implementation, you have not only wasted time and resources, but your solution does not generate the benefit (or ROI) that you expected. While reinforcement is often overlooked, it is the bridge between the period of change (the transition state) and how things will be done after implementation (the future state).

Keys to implementation:

• Be proactive, systematic and explicit when developing the mechanisms to reinforce the change
• Engage sponsors and coaches in reinforcement as they will be keys to creating the expectation that change will be maintained

Use the Checklist for Your Change Management Approach to be proactive, systematic and thorough in your change management work. The people side of your change is too important to be left up to chance, and you can accelerate change and minimize the disruption by thinking ahead and using a structured approach.

Download checklist from HERE

 This blog post was originally published by Tim Creasey in Proci blog.

Why do we need change management?

The answer may seem obvious to those of us who are change management practitioners. Still, we can get caught up in the details of our current change initiatives and forget about the roots of our practice, or we may struggle in explaining the need for change management in a clear and simple way to those who are unfamiliar with it.

In fact, a recent Prosci webinar on the 5 Tenets of Change Management revealed that many organizations (and practitioners) still struggle with articulating why a change is necessary and how change management supports business outcomes.

Below is an overview of the 5 Tenets of Change Management:

• We change for a reason
• Organizational change requires individual change
• Organizational outcomes are the collective result of individual change
• Change management is an enabling framework for managing the people side of change
• We apply change management to realize the benefits and desired outcomes of change

Now we can use these tenets to lay the foundation for explaining and justifying change management.

Tenet 1 – We change for a reason

When asked how clearly the reasons for change were articulated in their organizations, only 26% of respondents in a January 2017 webinar said that the reasons were articulated clearly or better.

Change is about moving out of a current state (how things are done today), and through a transition state to reach a desired future state. Usually, the reasons we change are to address a current issue or to take advantage of a future opportunity. Either way, the reason we change is to reach a future state where performance is better than in the current state.

Tenet 2 – Organizational change requires individual change

All too often, business professionals view change as happening at the organizational level. A few examples of this perspective include implementing a new ERP, introducing new documentation and optimization processes, or moving the company to a new location. But each of these initiatives requires individual employees to change the way they currently do their work. Unfortunately, 91% of webinar respondents said that these individual changes–which are crucial to the success of the project–were not clearly defined in their organization.

What if no one used the new ERP software? What if no one followed the new documentation and optimization processes? What if employees refused to move to the new location? Then the changes would not happen. Therefore, the most basic and true unit of change is the individual before the organization.

Tenet 3 – Organizational outcomes are the collective result of individual change

Only when individuals are able to change effectively can we achieve the desired organizational outcomes of the change. There are three components that determine the “effectiveness” of an individual change, which ultimately affect how project ROI, results and outcomes are achieved or missed:

1. Speed of adoption – accounts for how quickly employees move through the transition state. The quicker the change is adopted by each individual employee, the more likely the project will come in on schedule and within budget.
2. Ultimate utilization – describes how many employees reach their future state. The more individuals that utilize the change, the more likely it is to stick.
3. Proficiency – describes how well employees perform in their future state. If employees are able to successfully take on their new role or activities, then the organization can realize the benefits of the change.

Prosci’s change management ROI question sets the tone for how dependent organizational outcomes are on individual adoption and usage. The question to ask yourself, and the project teams and senior leaders you support, is this: What percent of project results depend of people changing the way they work? Respondents on the January 2017 webinar provided their answer to the question, and the results show exactly why change management is necessary:

Tenet 4 – Change management is an enabling framework for managing the people side of change

The first three tenets present the reality of change – that it happens at the individual level – and provide the crucial (and often missing) context for change management. And an email on Monday for training on Tuesday for go-live on Wednesday is not change management. But that is how 39% of webinar respondents see change regularly handled in their organization.

Now we can see just how important the role of the individual is in change; the results and outcomes of a change are based on the success of the individual transitions. Without change management, the individual change process is ignored, resulting in slower speed of adoption, lower ultimate utilization and poorer proficiency. Therefore, without change management, the project may not deliver and there is greater risk that the organization may not realize the expected benefits of changing. Understanding how individual and organizational change occurs demonstrates the necessity of having both an individual and organizational perspective in change management.

Tenet 5 – We apply change management to realize the benefits and desired outcomes of change

We need change management because:

• Results and desired outcomes depend on individual transitions
• There are people-side factors that determine or constrain project ROI
• There are costs and risks of ignoring or mismanaging the people side of change
• Because organizations that apply excellent change management are six times more likely to meet or exceed project objectives than organizations that apply poor change management

 This blog post was originally published by Tim Creasey in Proci blog.