What are the key components of an agile change management plan?
An agile change management strategy process includes key components such as a clear vision for change, stakeholder engagement strategies, iterative feedback loops, and adaptable processes. These elements ensure effective communication, continuous improvement, and responsiveness to evolving needs, helping teams navigate transitions smoothly while maintaining alignment with organizational goals.
The agile approach of implementing major changes has been popular for quite several years among a range of companies across the business environment, from small startups to large corporations. Most agile processes and methodologies do not explicitly address the role of change management as a function. However, at the same time, most agile practitioners and project practitioners agree that applying agile project management principles, including agile principles, to managing change management approaches is a critical skill set, especially when transitioning from traditional project management approaches used in software development. Surveys conducted by the Project Management Institute consistently found that change management is rated as one of the top skills for a project manager.
In this article, we will delve into a variety of toolkits that support agile methodologies in an agile environment, providing not only an overview of agile change management practices but also in-depth explanations and practical examples to help change managers, team members, and software developers, including the core development team, implement change effectively. Gone are the days when the agile team and change manager, sometimes guided by an agile coach, need to work on large presentations and slides detailing every aspect of the plan. It was not uncommon to see more than 100 slides for a change plan. In the agile world, documentation is important, but more important is the conversation and working with stakeholders.
Toolkit 1: Change Canvas: A Summarized Approach to Change Planning
The Change Canvas, also known as ‘change-on-a-page,’ serves as a condensed version of the change plan. While previous iterations leaned towards a project plan format, the current version focuses on key questions that change practitioners must answer. Previous versions of the change canvas are often designed with more of a project plan slant. In the current version, we focus on a core set of questions that the change practitioner needs to answer in creating a change plan. To download the canvas click here.
Example: “Imagine a technology company undergoing a major software upgrade. The Change Canvas was employed to create a concise summary of the change plan. This one-page document effectively communicated the essence of the software upgrade, outlining key aspects such as the purpose, stakeholders involved, and the approach to implementation. This simplified overview, along with the terms of service, became a valuable reference point during stakeholder meetings, fostering clearer communication and understanding.”
Example: “Imagine a technology company undergoing a major software upgrade. The Change Canvas was employed to create a concise summary of the change plan. This one-page document effectively communicated the essence of the software upgrade, outlining key aspects such as the purpose, stakeholders involved, and the approach to implementation. This simplified overview became a valuable reference point during stakeholder meetings, fostering clearer communication and understanding.”
Toolkit 2: Change Experiment Card: Iterative Approaches for Effective Change
A core part of agile is about experimenting and iterating through a series of changes, versus planning one change. The idea is that each small change is an experiment with a hypothesis that can be tested and proven to be true or false using data. When the overall change becomes a series of smaller changes, each change iterates on the previous change. The overall risk of failure is reduced and each change is one step closer to the ultimate successful end state.
Applying this concept in change management – The change experiment card is a template to help you design, plan, and test your change experiment. To download the template please click here.
Change experiments can range from:
Project message positioning to stakeholders
Learning design effectiveness
Effectiveness of a communications channel in engaging with stakeholders
Change readiness tactic
Effectiveness of the change vision artifact
Example: “In an educational institution implementing a new learning management system, the Change Experiment Card was utilized to plan and test various change experiments. One experiment focused on refining the messaging strategy to engage faculty members effectively. By treating each adjustment as an experiment, the change team gathered valuable data on the impact of messaging changes, allowing for continuous refinement and ultimately ensuring a smoother adoption of the new system.”
Toolkit 3: Behavior Over Time Graph: Anticipating and Tracking Stakeholder Experience
The Behavior Over Time Graph is a powerful tool for anticipating and tracking stakeholder behavior throughout the change process. Explore a specific case where stakeholders’ reactions were plotted over time, providing significant insights into the need for additional interventions, obstacles faced, and alignment with anticipated timelines.
Here is an example of a behavior over time graph.
Example: “During the rollout of a new performance management system in a corporate setting, the Behavior Over Time Graph was employed to track employee sentiments. As the system was implemented, the graph revealed an initial dip in engagement, prompting the change team to introduce targeted communication and training interventions. The subsequent rise in positive sentiments demonstrated the effectiveness of these interventions, showcasing the power of anticipating and responding to stakeholder behavior over time.”
The Connected Circles Analysis chart is indispensable for understanding the influencing powers of various stakeholders in an agile project. Through a practical example, discover how this analysis unveiled power dynamics, aiding the change manager in resolving relationship issues, mitigating risks, and leveraging the network for improved outcomes within the stakeholder group. A range of stakeholders are thrown together within the same project from the beginning and there is a high expectation of successful collaboration and teamwork across the board. This analysis helps you to visualise the power dynamism and influence mechanisms amongst different stakeholders.
With the insight gained from this, the change manager can better focus on how to resolve any relationship issues, risks, and leverage the network to achieve better relationships and outcomes within the group.
Example: “In a cross-functional agile project within a large organization, the Connected Circles Analysis chart was used to understand the influencing powers of various stakeholders. By visualizing the dynamics, the change manager identified potential conflicts and areas of collaboration. This insight facilitated proactive measures to enhance relationships, resolve conflicts, and leverage the collective influence of stakeholders for a more cohesive and collaborative project environment.”
Toolkit 5: Causal Loop Diagram: Systems Thinking for Agile Projects
Systems thinking is critical in agile projects, emphasizing the need to understand how different components interact. The Causal Loop Diagram helps analyze key factors and their causal relationships within the system.
The below example shows employee sentiments toward a system change. This is a very simplified version of what happens since in real scenarios there could be various factors that are reinforcing each other, leading to lots of arrows pointing at different directions. At a more sophisticated level, you may assign points in terms of the strength of the causal relationship. At a basic level even plotting the causal relationship between a few key factors may generate key insight into the ‘why’ of the dynamics of a situation.
Example:
“In a manufacturing company implementing agile practices across departments, the Causal Loop Diagram was applied to understand the dynamics of employee sentiments toward process changes. By mapping out the causal relationships between factors such as training effectiveness, leadership communication, and workflow adjustments, the change team gained a holistic view. This enabled them to address root causes, leading to a more systemic and sustainable improvement in employee sentiments over time.”
In the dynamic landscape of organizations undergoing numerous agile changes, the ability to capture and visualize these transformations becomes paramount for informed decision-making. Data visualization emerges as a powerful tool, offering stakeholders a comprehensive understanding of the organizational change landscape. It enables them to navigate through various changes, identify key capacity challenges, recognize crunch periods, understand the velocity of changes over time, and pinpoint areas requiring additional support.
To effectively navigate this complex terrain, organizations can leverage advanced tools such as The Change Compass. This tool provides a consolidated view of change, facilitating improved planning and implementation strategies. By integrating operational routines that consistently focus on change data alongside other business and project information, organizations can systematically enhance their change capability. This process involves regular reviews, engaging stakeholder discussions, iterative refinement of change tactics, and adaptive adjustments to plans in anticipation of evolving change dynamics.
In adopting such a holistic approach, organizations not only streamline their change management processes but also foster a culture of constant improvement and adaptability. The use of tools like The Change Compass becomes instrumental in creating a unified vision of change, aligning stakeholders, and ensuring that the organization remains agile and responsive in the face of ongoing transformations.
In today’s fast-paced business environment, most organizations are engaged in numerous change initiatives, including organizational transformation, simultaneously. These initiatives might range from digital transformation efforts to restructuring, new product launches, or cultural shifts. For change management practitioners and leaders, the challenge is not only to ensure each initiative succeeds but also to align these efforts strategically to maximize overall business benefit. Let’s explore practical strategies for aligning multiple initiatives and measuring change adoption, providing actionable insights for change practitioners and leaders.
The Complexity of Multiple Change Initiatives
The complexity of managing multiple change initiatives lies in the potential for overlap, conflicting priorities, and resource strain. Each initiative, while aiming to deliver specific benefits, competes for attention, time, and resources. Moreover, when several initiatives target similar business outcomes, it becomes challenging to attribute success to any single effort. Most business units are only measuring a certain number of business metrics, and with a large number of initiatives there will bound to be overlaps. This makes it essential to adopt a strategic approach that ensures alignment and optimal resource utilisation.
One of the most critical aspects of managing multiple change initiatives is measuring the adoption of each change. This involves not only tracking how well each initiative is being implemented but also creating a clear and detailed plan to understand its impact on the organization. The following strategies can help you effectively measure change adoption across various initiatives:
1. Establish Common Metrics
Establishing common metrics across all change initiatives is a foundational step in ensuring that change adoption is measured consistently and effectively. Common metrics provide a standardized way to evaluate progress, compare the success of different initiatives, and gain a holistic view of the organization’s overall change efforts. This approach allows for “apples-to-apples” comparisons, enabling senior leaders to make informed decisions about resource allocation, prioritization, and potential adjustments needed to maximize business benefits.
By identifying and applying a set of core metrics consistently across all change initiatives, organizations can better track the adoption process, identify areas where additional support may be needed, and ultimately ensure that changes are embedded successfully and sustainably.
Here’s a deeper look at some of the common metrics that can be established (note that we take a holistic and strategic lense in ‘adoption’, and not limiting adoption to the end of the project):
Employee Awareness and Understanding of the Change
Employee awareness and understanding are the first critical steps in the change adoption process. Without a clear understanding of what the change entails, why it is happening, and how it will impact their work, employees may experience discomfort and are unlikely to fully embrace the change. Measuring awareness and understanding helps ensure that communication efforts are effective and that employees have the necessary information to begin adopting the change.
Awareness Surveys: Regular surveys can be conducted to assess employees’ awareness of the change initiative. Questions can focus on whether employees are aware of the change, if they understand the reasons behind it, and if they can articulate the expected outcomes.
Knowledge Assessments: Beyond awareness, knowledge assessments can help gauge how well employees understand the details of the change. This could involve quizzes, interactive sessions, or discussions that test their understanding of new processes, tools, or organizational structures.
Communication Effectiveness: Track the effectiveness of communication campaigns through metrics such as email open rates, attendance at town halls or webinars, and engagement with internal communication platforms. High levels of engagement can indicate that employees are receiving and processing the information about the change.
Employee Engagement and Buy-in
Employee engagement and buy-in are essential for successful change adoption. If employees are not engaged or do not buy into the change, they are less likely to put in the effort needed to adopt new behaviours, processes, or tools, which decreases the chances of success. Measuring engagement and buy-in provides insight into how committed employees are to making the change successful.
Engagement Scores: Use engagement surveys to measure overall employee engagement levels before and after the change initiative. These scores can help you understand the impact of the change on employee morale and identify any groups that may need additional support.
Feedback Channels: Monitor and analyse feedback from employees through formal and informal channels. This includes responses to surveys, comments in focus groups, and feedback collected through suggestion boxes or digital platforms. The sentiment expressed in this feedback can be a strong indicator of buy-in.
Participation Rates: Track participation in change-related activities such as training sessions, workshops, and change champion programs. High participation rates typically indicate strong engagement and willingness to adopt the change.
Utilisation of New Systems, Processes, or Tools
The utilisation of new systems, processes, or tools introduced by a change initiative is a direct measure of adoption. If employees are not using the new tools or following the new processes, the change initiative cannot deliver its intended benefits. Measuring utilisation helps ensure that the changes are being practically applied in day-to-day operations.
System Usage Analytics: For technology-driven changes, track the usage of new systems through analytics. Metrics such as login frequency, time spent on the system, and the completion of key tasks can provide a clear picture of adoption.
Process Adherence: Implement tracking mechanisms to monitor adherence to new processes. This could involve audits, self-reporting, or the use of process management tools that track whether employees are following the new workflows.
Tool Adoption Rates: Measure the adoption rates of any new tools introduced as part of the change. This could include tracking the number of users, the frequency of use, and the breadth of functionality being utilised.
Proficiency in Applying the Change
Proficiency in applying the change is a crucial metric because it not only indicates whether employees are using the new systems, processes, or tools, but also how effectively they are using them. This metric helps ensure that employees have the necessary skills and competencies to fully leverage the change and achieve the desired outcomes.
Skill Assessments: Conduct skill assessments to measure employees’ proficiency in using new tools, systems, or processes. This could involve practical exams, simulations, or peer reviews where employees demonstrate their competency.
Performance Metrics: Monitor performance metrics related to the new processes or tools. For example, if a change initiative involves a new sales system, track metrics like sales conversion rates, the accuracy of data entry, or the speed of customer service resolution.
Certification Programs: Implement certification or accreditation programs where employees must demonstrate a certain level of proficiency to earn certification. Tracking the completion rates of these programs can indicate overall proficiency levels.
Realization of Expected Business Benefits
The ultimate goal of any change initiative is to realize clear goals and the expected business benefits, whether they be financial, operational, or strategic. Measuring the realization of these benefits provides a clear indication of the success of the change initiative and its impact on the organization.
Benefit Tracking: Establish specific, measurable business benefits for each change initiative, such as cost savings, revenue growth, improved customer satisfaction, or increased productivity. Each initiative should have clear objectives to track these metrics regularly and assess whether the change is delivering the expected outcomes.
ROI Analysis: Conduct return on investment (ROI) analysis for each initiative, comparing the costs of implementation against the benefits realized. This helps quantify the financial impact of the change and determine its overall value to the organization.
Outcome-Based Metrics: Focus on outcome-based metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with the organization’s strategic goals. For example, if a change initiative aims to improve customer experience, track customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and repeat business.
Note that these may not be activities that change practitioners are leading within a project setting, however they should play a key part in contributing to the design and tracking of the adoption which then leads to the ultimate benefits.
Implementing Common Metrics in Practice
Implementing common metrics across multiple change initiatives requires a coordinated effort and a strong governance framework. Here are some practical steps to ensure that these metrics are applied effectively:
Alignment with Strategic Goals: Ensure that the selected metrics align with the organization’s broader strategic goals. This alignment helps prioritize initiatives and ensures that all change efforts contribute to the organization’s overall objectives.
Centralized Data Management: Establish a centralized data management system to collect, store, and analyze metrics across all initiatives. This system should allow for easy comparison and aggregation of data, providing a comprehensive view of change adoption.
Consistent Methodology: Develop a consistent methodology for measuring and reporting metrics. This includes standardized survey questions, data collection tools, and reporting formats to ensure that metrics are comparable across different initiatives.
Continuous Monitoring and Reporting: Regularly monitor and report on the metrics to track progress and identify any areas of concern. Strong leadership is essential in using dashboards and scorecards to provide real-time visibility into change adoption across the organization.
Feedback and Adjustment: Use the insights gained from these metrics to provide feedback to initiative leaders and make necessary adjustments. Continuous improvement is key to ensuring that change initiatives remain on track and deliver the expected benefits.
Implementing metric tracking can be a very manual and labour intensive process. However, there are various digital tools that can be leverage to automate the data capture and streamline the data analysis and insight generation process. Chat to us to find out how The Change Compass can help.
2. Conduct Regular Assessments
Regular assessments are critical to understanding how well each initiative is being adopted and its impact on the organisation. These assessments should be scheduled at key milestones and involve both quantitative and qualitative evaluation.
Pulse Surveys: Conduct pulse surveys at regular intervals to gauge employee sentiment and engagement with each initiative. These short, focused surveys can provide real-time insights into how changes are being received and where additional support may be needed. However do note that pulse survey in themselves may only provide very superficial insights without the depth that may be required to understand the ‘why’ or ‘how’.
Performance Reviews: Where possible integrate change adoption metrics into regular performance reviews. This ensures that the impact of initiatives is continuously monitored and that any issues are addressed promptly.
Change Audits: Periodically perform change audits to assess the effectiveness of each initiative. This involves reviewing processes, outcomes, and feedback to determine whether the change is being adopted as intended.
3. Leverage Existing Channels
Leverage existing communication and feedback channels to measure adoption. This approach ensures that you are not overloading employees with new processes and allows for seamless integration into their daily routines.
Employee Feedback Platforms: Utilise platforms already in place, such as intranet forums like Yammer, suggestion inboxes, or regular team meetings, to gather feedback on change initiatives. This feedback can provide valuable insights into adoption levels and potential areas of resistance.
Usage Analytics: For technology-driven initiatives, use existing analytics tools to monitor system usage and user behaviour. This can help identify adoption rates and areas where additional training or support may be needed.
Regular Check-ins: Integrate adoption tracking into regular team check-ins. This allows managers to discuss progress with their teams and identify any challenges early on.
4. Quantify Qualitative Data
While quantitative metrics are essential, qualitative data provides context and deeper insights into how changes are being adopted. It’s important to develop methods to quantify this qualitative data to better understand the impact of your initiatives. Quantitative data are easier to present, and may be more memorable to your stakeholders.
Sentiment Analysis: Use sentiment analysis tools to analyse employee feedback, comments from surveys, or even social media mentions. This helps quantify the overall sentiment towards each initiative, providing a clearer picture of adoption.
Focus Groups: Conduct focus groups to gather in-depth feedback on specific initiatives. While this data is qualitative, you can quantify it by categorizing responses into themes and measuring the frequency of each theme.
Narrative Metrics: Develop narrative metrics that capture the stories behind the numbers. For example, if an initiative aims to improve customer service, track success stories where employees went above and beyond as a result of the new changes.
5. Analyse Trends and Patterns
Analysing trends and patterns over time is essential for understanding the broader impact of multiple initiatives. By looking at adoption data longitudinally, you can identify which initiatives are driving long-term change and which may require adjustments.
Adoption Trajectories: Track the adoption trajectories of each initiative. Are there certain initiatives that show rapid early adoption but then plateau? Understanding these patterns can help refine strategies to sustain momentum.
Cross-Initiative Analysis: Compare adoption trends across different initiatives. Look for correlations or conflicts between initiatives. For example, if one initiative shows strong adoption while another lags, investigate whether they are competing for the same resources or if there is confusion about priorities.
Predictive Analytics: Use predictive analytics to forecast future adoption trends based on historical data. This can help in proactive decision-making and resource allocation. This is absolutely the value of data, when you have historical data you can easily forecast what lies ahead and provide an overlay for change portfolio consideration during business planning cycles.
6. Communicate Progress Transparently
Transparent communication is vital for building trust and ensuring that everyone in the organization is aware of the progress of each initiative. This helps in aligning efforts and maintaining momentum.
Regular Updates: Provide regular updates on the progress of each initiative. Use a variety of channels such as newsletters, town halls, or internal social media to keep everyone informed.
Success Stories: Share success stories that highlight the benefits of adoption. This not only celebrates achievements but also reinforces the value of the initiatives and encourages further adoption.
Dashboard Reporting: Develop a dashboard that tracks and displays adoption metrics for all initiatives in real-time. Make this dashboard accessible to key stakeholders to ensure transparency and accountability.
7. Establish a Governance Framework
A governance framework is essential for coordinating multiple initiatives and ensuring that they are aligned with the organization’s strategic goals. This framework should provide structure, oversight, and guidance for all change efforts.
Steering Committees: Establish steering committees composed of senior leaders who oversee the progress of all initiatives. These committees should ensure that initiatives are aligned with business objectives and that resources are appropriately allocated.
Change Champions: Identify change champions within the organization who can advocate for adoption and provide support to their peers. These individuals play a crucial role in driving change from within and ensuring alignment across initiatives, similar to a strong leadership team.
Standardised Processes: Develop standardized business processes for planning, implementing, and measuring change initiatives. This ensures consistency and allows for more effective comparison and integration of efforts. In establishing the right routines they become embedded within business practices and are not seen as an ‘additional effort required’ on top of their day-jobs.
Aligning Multiple Initiatives for Maximum Business Benefit
While measuring adoption is crucial, aligning multiple initiatives to maximize business benefits is the ultimate goal. Here are key strategies to ensure alignment:
1. Prioritise Initiatives Based on Strategic Value
Not all initiatives are created equal. Prioritising initiatives based on their strategic value ensures that resources are allocated effectively and that the most critical changes receive the attention they deserve.
Value Assessment: Conduct a value assessment for each initiative to determine its potential impact on the organization’s strategic goals. Focus on initiatives that align most closely with these goals.
Resource Allocation: Allocate resources based on the strategic value of each initiative. This may involve dedicating more resources to high-priority initiatives while scaling back on others.
Phased Implementation: Consider implementing high-priority initiatives in phases. This allows you to focus efforts on achieving quick wins, which can build momentum for broader change.
Integration of change initiatives is essential to avoid duplication of efforts and to ensure that all initiatives are working towards common goals. This requires a coordinated approach and effective communication across initiatives and stakeholders.
Change Integration Plan: Develop a change integration plan that outlines how different initiatives will work together. This plan should identify potential overlaps and ensure that all initiatives are aligned. It could be that lower prioritised initiatives be pushed out making the runway for more strategic initiatives with higher priorities. It could also be ‘packaging’ change releases across different initiatives where they make sense to deliver change to the impacted teams in a more cohesive and easier-to-digest manner, similar to a comprehensive change management plan. This may be due to the nature of the changes or the volume and capacity required in the impact of the changes.
Cross-Functional Teams: Establish cross-functional teams to oversee the integration of initiatives. These teams should include team members who are representatives from each initiative to ensure collaboration and alignment. Ideally, cross-functional forums already exist and this is just tapping into an existing channel.
Unified Communication Strategy: Create a unified communication strategy that aligns messaging across initiatives. This helps avoid confusion and ensures that employees receive consistent information. To do this, data is required to be able to have a clear view in terms of communication content and planned releases.
3. Monitor and Adjust in Real-Time
The business environment is dynamic, and change initiatives need to be adaptable. Monitoring progress in real-time and being willing to adjust strategies is crucial for success. At a minimum, set up routine reporting timelines so that data and reporting are harmonised and embedded within the operating rhythms of those involved.
Real-Time Monitoring: Use real-time data to monitor the progress of each initiative within the change process. This allows you to identify issues early and make adjustments as needed.
Agile Approach: Adopt an agile approach to change management, where initiatives are continuously reviewed and adjusted based on feedback and changing circumstances.
Flexibility in Execution: Be prepared to pivot if an initiative is not delivering the expected results or needs to be adjusted based on the challenges of impacted business teams. This might involve reallocating resources, adjusting timelines, or even pausing initiatives that are not aligned with current business needs.
Successfully managing and aligning multiple change initiatives is a complex but achievable task. By establishing common metrics, conducting regular assessments, leveraging existing channels, and quantifying qualitative data, you can effectively measure adoption. Aligning initiatives for maximum business benefit requires prioritisation, integration, and real-time monitoring. For change management practitioners and leaders, these strategies are essential for driving organisational success in a world of increased rate of change. By strategically aligning multiple initiatives, you can ensure that the organisation not only adapts to change but thrives in it.
Though not elaborated, what is inherent in this article is the importance of behaviour in adoption, understanding it, and measuring it. To read more about driving behaviour change check out The Ultimate Guide to Behaviour Change.
Organisational change management professionals are increasingly requested to provide measurement, data, and insights to various stakeholder groups. Not only does this include tracking various change management outcomes such as business readiness or adoption, but stakeholder concerns also include such as change saturation and visibility of incoming initiative impacts.
To become better at working with data there is much that change managers can learn best practices from data scientists (without becoming one of course). Let’s explore how change management can benefit from the practices and methodologies employed by data scientists, focusing on time allocation, digital tools, system building, hypothesis-led approaches, and the growing need for data and analytical capabilities.
Data scientists spend a substantial portion of their time on data collection and cleansing from data sources. According to industry estimates, about 60-80% of a data scientist’s time is dedicated to these tasks. This meticulous process ensures that the data used for analysis is accurate, complete, and reliable.
In the below diagram from researchgate.net you can see that for data scientists the vast majority of the time is spent on collecting, cleansing and organising data.
You might say that change managers are not data scientists because the work nature is different, and therefore should not need to carve out time for these activities? Well, it turns out that the type of activities and proportions of time spent is similar across a range of data professionals, including business analysts.
Below is the survey results published by Business Broadway, showing that even business analysts and data analysts spend significant time in data collection, cleansing, and preparation.
Lessons for Change Management
a. Emphasize Data Collection and Cleansing: For change managers, this translates to prioritizing the collection of reliable data related to change initiatives as a part of a structured approach. This might include stakeholder feedback, performance metrics, impact data and other relevant data points. Clean data is essential for accurate analysis and insightful decision-making. Data projects undertaken by change managers are not going to be as large or as complex as data scientists, however the key takeaway is that this part of the work is critical and sufficient time should be allocated and not skipped.
What is data change management and why is it important?
Data change management involves overseeing and controlling changes in data systems to ensure accuracy and consistency. It’s crucial for minimizing errors, maintaining data integrity, and enhancing decision-making processes. Effective management safeguards against potential risks associated with data alterations, ensuring organizations can adapt to shifts in information seamlessly.
b. Allocate Time Wisely: Just as data scientists allocate significant time to data preparation, change managers should also dedicate sufficient time to gathering and cleaning data before diving into analysis. This ensures that the insights derived are based on accurate and reliable information.
It also depends on the data topic and your audience. If you are presenting comparative data, for example, change volume across different business units. You may be able to do spot checks on the data and not verify every data line. However, if you are presenting to operations business units like call centres where they are very sensitive to time and capacity challenges, you may need to go quite granular in terms of exactly what the time impost is across initiatives.
c. Training and Awareness: Ensuring that the change management team understands the importance of data quality and is trained in basic data cleansing techniques can go a long way in improving the overall effectiveness of change initiatives in the desired future state. Think of scheduling regular data sessions/workshops to review and present data observations and findings to enhance the team’s ability to capture accurate data as well as the ability to interpret and apply insights. The more capable the team is in understanding data, the more value they can add to their stakeholders leveraging data insights.
2. Leveraging Digital Tools: Enhancing Efficiency and Accuracy
Data scientists rely on a variety of digital tools to streamline their work. These tools assist in data collection, auditing, visualization, and insight generation. AI and machine learning technologies are increasingly being used to automate and enhance these processes.
Data scientists rely on various programming, machine learning and data visualisation such as SQL, Python, Jupyter, R as well as various charting tools.
a. Adopt Digital Tools: Change managers should leverage digital tools to support each phase of their data work. There are plenty of digital tools out there for various tasks such as surveys, data analysis and reporting tools.
For example, Change Compass has built-in data analysis, data interpretation, data audit, AI and other tools to help streamline and reduce manual efforts across various data work steps. However, once again even with automation and AI the work of data checking and cleansing does not go away. It becomes even more important.
b. Utilize AI and Machine Learning: AI can play a crucial role in automating repetitive tasks, identifying patterns, data outliers, and generating insights. For example, AI-driven analytics tools can help predict potential change saturation, level of employee adoption or identify areas needing additional support during various phases of change initiatives.
With Change Compass for example, AI may be leverage to summarise data, call out key risks, generate data, and forecast future trends.
c. Continuous Learning: Continuous learning is essential for ensuring that change management teams stay adept at handling data and generating valuable insights. With greater stakeholder expectations and demands, regular training sessions on the latest data management practices and techniques can be helpful. These sessions can cover a wide range of topics, including data collection methodologies, data cleansing techniques, data visualisation techniques and the use of AI and machine learning for predictive analytics. By fostering a culture of continuous learning, organizations can ensure that their change management teams remain proficient in leveraging data for driving effective change.
In addition to formal training, creating opportunities for hands-on experience with real-world data can significantly enhance the learning process. For instance, change teams can work on pilot projects where they apply new data analysis techniques to solve specific challenges within the organization. Regular knowledge-sharing sessions, where team members present case studies and share insights from their experiences, can also promote collective learning and continuous improvement.
Furthermore, fostering collaboration between change managers and data scientists or data analysts can provide invaluable mentorship and cross-functional learning opportunities. By investing in continuous learning and development, organizations can build a change management function that is not only skilled in data management but also adept at generating actionable insights that drive successful change initiatives.
3. Building the Right System: Ensuring Sustainable Insight Generation
It is not just about individuals or teams working on data. A robust system is vital for ongoing insight generation. This involves creating processes for data collection, auditing, cleansing, and establishing data governance and governance bodies to manage and report on data.
Governance structures play a vital role in managing and reporting data. Establishing governance bodies ensures that there is accountability and oversight in data management practices. These bodies can develop and enforce data policies, and oversee data quality initiatives. They can also be responsible for supporting the management of a central data repository where all relevant data is stored and managed.
a. Establish Clear Processes: Develop and document processes for collecting and managing data related to change initiatives and document any new processes. This ensures consistency and reliability in data handling. There should also be effective communication of these processes using designated communication channels to ensure smooth transition and adherence.
b. Implement Governance Structures: Set up governance bodies to oversee data governance practices as a part of data governance efforts. This includes ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and maintaining data integrity. The governance can sponsor the investment and usage of the change data platform. This repository should be accessible to stakeholders involved in the change management process, promoting transparency and collaboration. Note that a governance group can simply be a leadership team regular team meeting and does not need to be necessarily creating a special committee. Data governance group members (potentially representative business owners) foster a sense of ownership and can be empowered to resolve potential issues with data and usage. Key performance indicators and key change indicators may be setup as goals.
c. Invest in system Infrastructure: Build the necessary system infrastructure to support data management and analysis that is easy to use and provides the features to support insight generation and application for the change team.
Data scientists and data teams often use a hypothesis-led approach, where they test, reject, or confirm hypotheses using data. This method goes beyond simply reporting what the data shows to understanding the underlying causes and implications.
a. Define Hypotheses: Before analyzing data, clearly define the hypotheses you want to test. For instance, if there is a hypothesis that there is a risk of too much change in Department A, specify the data needed to test this hypothesis.
b. Use Data to Confirm or Reject Hypotheses: Collect and analyze data to confirm or reject your hypotheses. This approach helps in making informed decisions rather than relying on assumptions or certain stakeholder opinions.
c. Focus on Actionable Insights: Hypothesis-led analysis often leads to more actionable insights. It is also easier to use this approach to dispel any myths of false perceptions.
For example: Resolving Lack of Adoption
Hypothesis: The lack of adoption of a new software tool in the organization is due to insufficient coaching and support for employees.
Data Collection:
Gather data on the presence of managerial coaching and perceived quality. Also gather data on post go live user support.
Collect feedback from employees through surveys regarding the adequacy and clarity of coaching and support.
Analyse usage data of the new software to identify adoption rates across different departments.
Analysis:
Compare adoption rates between employees who received sufficient coaching and support versus those who did not.
Correlate feedback scores on training effectiveness with usage data to see if those who found the training useful are more likely to adopt the tool.
Segment data by department to identify if certain teams have lower adoption rates and investigate their specific training experiences.
Actionable Insights:
If data shows a positive correlation between coaching and support, and software adoption, this supports the hypothesis that enhancing coaching and support programs can improve adoption rates.
If certain departments show lower adoption despite completing coaching sessions, investigate further into department-specific issues such as workload or differing processes that may affect adoption.
Implement targeted interventions such as additional training sessions, one-on-one support, or improved training materials for departments with low adoption rates.
5. Building Data and Analytical Capabilities: A Core Need for Change Management
As data and analytical capabilities become increasingly crucial, change management functions must build the necessary people and process capabilities to leverage data-based insights effectively.
a. Invest in Training: Equip change management teams with the skills needed to manage data and generate insights. This includes training in data analysis, visualization, and interpretation.
b. Foster a Data-Driven Culture: A lot of organisations are already on the bandwagon to encourage a culture where data is valued and used for decision-making from current state to future state. The change process needs to promote this equally within the change management function. This involves promoting the use of data in everyday tasks and ensuring that all team members understand its importance. Think of incorporating data-led discussions into routine meeting meetings.
c. Develop Analytical Frameworks: Create frameworks and methodologies for analyzing change management data. This includes defining common key metrics, setting benchmarks, and establishing protocols for data collection and analysis for change data. Data and visual templates may be easier to follow for those with lower capabilities in data analytics.
Practical Steps to Implement Data-Driven Change Management
To integrate these lessons effectively, senior change practitioners can follow these practical steps:
Develop a Data Strategy: Create a comprehensive data strategy that outlines the processes, tools, and governance structures needed to manage change management data effectively.
Conduct a Data Audit: Begin by auditing the existing data related to change management. Identify gaps and areas for improvement.
Adopt a Hypothesis-Led Approach: Encourage the use of hypothesis-led approaches to move beyond descriptive analytics and derive more meaningful insights.
Invest in Technology: Invest in the necessary digital tools and technologies to support data collection, cleansing, visualization, and analysis.
Train the Team: Provide training and development opportunities for the change management team to build their data and analytical capabilities.
Collaborate Across Functions: Foster collaboration between change management and data science teams to leverage their expertise and insights.
Implement Governance Structures: Establish governance bodies to oversee data management practices and ensure compliance with regulations and standards.
By learning from the practices and methodologies of data scientists, change management functions can significantly enhance their effectiveness. Prioritizing data collection and cleansing, leveraging digital tools, building robust systems, adopting hypothesis-led approaches, and developing data and analytical capabilities are key strategies that change management teams can implement. By doing so, they can ensure that their change initiatives are data-driven, insightful, and impactful, ultimately leading to better business outcomes.
There is now plenty of research and articles on successful organizational change management out there. However, most of these are focused on driving a singular change process impacting a set of key stakeholders with one change management plan. The single change may be the launch of a new product, digital transformation, a radical change that impacts the company culture, changes to internal processes, a change in the company’s strategic goals, or some kind of organizational transformation that breaks from the status quo, or examples of transformational change that lead to clear success. How many organisations can you think of that are just driving one singular change initiative across the entire organisation? Exactly.
Particularly when an organization is adopting agile ways of working, managing multiple change initiatives becomes even more critical. If everyone is working towards one big initiative launch it is much easier to plan for. It is more complex with lots of initiatives all launching a series of changes throughout the year. However, in agile organisations this is the norm. Managing the impact of changes on the frontline, in this case, becomes more complex with significant coordination and planning involved.
To effectively manage multiple change initiatives one needs to establish the following:
To manage multiple change initiatives one needs to be able to see what is changing. This sounds simple but yet one of the hardest things to accomplish for large organisations where there are often more than a hundred or hundreds of change initiatives at any one time. This is not about individual project management. To achieve this, one needs to be able to capture the data on the change impacts and how they impact different parts of the organization. This can then be used to better plan for initiatives as a part of the strategic plan.
Most organisations still struggle with spreadsheets to try and create some view of what is changing, however still not able to effectively capture the totality of what is changing since this involves a view of not just projects, but also BAU (business as usual) initiatives. To move with the times, organisations need to be able to leverage digital means of understanding what is changing, how they impact stakeholders and team members, and what this means from a planning perspective.
Effective organisational change governance and decision making
Most organisations are good at ensuring that there is a structured way of allocating the dollars to the right priorities when it comes to funding projects. However, the same may not be said for effective governance in orchestrating and planning for how change initiatives are implemented and embedded into BAU, particularly with regards to business processes. This is often not a part of the company’s culture and a part of the change management process.
An effective operations governance process is required, leveraging from a clear view of the totality of what is changing, and through this effective sequence, package, integrate or prioritise the change impacts on the organization. This includes tracking key performance indicators of the changes and ensure the entire team understands how this is tracked and reported to drive the success of change initiatives. Strong organisational leadership from the senior executives and effective communication is required to drive full adoption.
The governance body needs to be able to establish clear decision-making and escalation processes and articulate this to initiative drivers.
Oversight of Change Initiatives: Strategies for Successful Change
With significant changes happening concurrently, it is a top priority for change managers to establish clear and scalable business engagement channels as a part of the change management strategy to ensure that stakeholder groups feel like they are a part of designing the changes (vs. being a victim of them). This includes regular business forums such as weekly, monthly or quarterly meetings and standups. Other communication channels would also include intranet, email, Yammer or audio-visual outlets.
It is through well-oiled engagement channels across the entire organization that initiative owners and business leaders can quickly and frequently implement changes rapidly and concurrently. This will thereby increase the chances of success for change.
To read more about managing multiple initiatives check out our Knowledge section under Portfolio Management where we have a range of practical articles.
The MoSCoW method of prioritization is well used by Business Analysts, Project Managers, and Software Developers in software development. The focus is on identifying and agreeing with key stakeholders what are the core levels of requirements that should be focused on more than others. This process of prioritization is a great way to enable a better outcome in focusing the efforts of the team on the most important aspects of the solution given limited time and cost. Let’s take a closer look.
The MoSCoW prioritization technique is well used by Business Analysts, Project Managers and Software Developers and particularly relevant in agile project management. The focus is on identifying and agreeing with key stakeholders what are the core levels of requirements that should be focused on more than others. This process of prioritization will then enable a better outcome in focusing the efforts of the team on the most important aspects of the solution given limited time and cost.
MoSCoW stands for: Must Have, Should Have, and Could Have.
There is significant opportunity for change practitioners to also adopt this technique to better prioritise a range of different change interventions. Too often, change activities are planned as a result of stakeholder requests, and not necessarily as a result of a prioritized approach of what approaches/activities provides the best outcome versus others.
1. Must Haves:
These are core, fundamental project requirements that must be there for the end outcome to be there. These are the non-negotiable ones defined at the startup of the project without which the goals of the project cannot be achieved.
For example, in implementing a new system, the users must know that the system is going to replace the previous system and the reason for this. Users must also know how to operate the new system prior to the older system being switched off.
2. Should Haves:
These are features or requirements that would have a high priority to reach the project outcome within the product development process. These can often be core features that will add metrics to the user/customer experience. However, they are not a must, and given challenges in time or cost they can be deprioritized.
For example, for a new system implementation it would be highly desirable to allow the users to access a sandbox to be able to play with the features prior to the launch to improve their readiness. It could also be that due to the large number of users using the system it makes sense to conduct a large scale awareness campaign to broadcast the arrival of the new system. Core user experience requirements and basic navigation functionalities may be a part of this category, as a part of the minimum viable product (MVP).
3. Could Haves:
These are nice to haves given sufficient resources such as time and cost. These requirements are definitely not critical and can easily be deprioritized as needed.
For example, in implementing the new system it may be nice to have coaching workshops with users prior to the go-live to offer additional learning support for those who may need more help. It could also be various system support materials such as cheat sheets, booklets, etc. to help the user embed the ins and outs of using the new system.
4. Won’t Haves (or Would Haves):
These are potential features or requirements that may be looked at in the future if there is sufficient resources available. This is the lowest in the order of priority, meaning that it will not make significant impact to the outcome of the project.
For example, in implementing the new system refresh training sessions could be offered later down the line for some users after go live. Depending on the organization and previous experiences an ‘embedment campaign’ could also be scheduled to drive continual usage of the system. But given the cost required these are deemed lowest in the priority.
In prioritizing change management approaches and interventions this way, we are adopting a structured method of determining the activities we are investing in to get the right outcome. The clarity of which interventions are core and foundational, versus others that are desirable or nice to haves is important to the success of the initiative. This could also avoid any disagreements or questioning of the change approach further down the line as the approach follows a structured and agreed process with stakeholders.
In today’s dynamic business environment, marked by ongoing disruptions like environmental challenges, economic shifts, and the rapid advancement of AI tools, the pace of change demands that organizational agility and change readiness become critical capabilities for sustained competitive advantage and success. As businesses strive to remain competitive and responsive to ever-changing conditions, change practitioners play a pivotal role in designing and incorporating agility into their change planning and implementation efforts.
This article explores the importance of agility in creating an agile organization through effective organizational change management, drawing on research from industry experts such as McKinsey, and offers valuable insights for change practitioners to foster agility in their projects while building a change-ready workforce and navigating unpredictable business decisions, stakeholders, and environments.
The Significance of Agility in Change Management:
Agility has emerged as a key attribute for organizations seeking to thrive amidst disruption. McKinsey’s research on enterprise agility highlights the positive business impact achieved by companies that effectively embrace agility. These organizations demonstrate higher customer satisfaction, increased revenue growth, and improved employee engagement. By incorporating agility into their change initiatives, organizations can respond swiftly to market changes, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and mitigate risks more effectively.
Specifically, what this means is that imagine you are in a program of 5 projects over 2 years. All projects are working with a range of stakeholders within 2 divisions. There can be significant influence that your program can have on the work practices of these 2 divisions over a 2 year period. Now imagine incorporating agile practices in how you implement change. You now have the ability to really shift the dial for these work functions.
Designing Agile Change Management Strategies:
Change practitioners working on individual projects play a vital role in fostering agility within their organizations. To design and incorporate agility into change planning and implementation, practitioners should consider the following strategies:
Embrace iterative approaches: This may sound like a no-brainer, but definitely start by incorporating agile principles into your project planning and delivery. By breaking down change initiatives into smaller, manageable increments, practitioners can iterate and adjust their strategies based on real-time feedback and evolving stakeholder needs. Not a lot of change practitioners do this well. A lot still follow the standard plan and execute approach without a lot of iteration and pivoting of tactics and approaches.
Foster a culture of experimentation: Encourage stakeholders and team members to experiment with new ideas and solutions. Create a safe environment where psychological safety is prioritized, and setbacks are seen as learning opportunities, enabling continuous improvement and challenging the status quo of innovation. You may or may not have the luxury of being a part of a project team that promotes this environment. However, you can proactively set the expectation with your stakeholders and explain why this is valuable to help deliver a better change outcome.
Encourage collaboration and cross-functional teamwork: Establish channels for open communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Cross-functional teams can contribute diverse perspectives and expertise, enabling quicker decision-making and adaptability. This may sound like a generic corporate speak … team work and collaboration. However, you can easily design cross-functional teams, work processes and decision making forums to encourage this. The connection and collaboration across teams helps them to be more agile to understand different business forces and perspectives, avoiding ‘insular thinking’.
Prioritize flexibility and adaptability: Recognize that change plans may need to be adjusted or revised as circumstances evolve. Build flexibility into the change management process, allowing for agility in response to unexpected challenges or opportunities. In every project, there are aspects that are different from other projects, even if you are involving the same stakeholders. Designing chuncked-down, flexible modules of change helps you to be more agile.
Remaining Agile as a Change Practitioner:
Change practitioners themselves must also cultivate transparency and agility to navigate the dynamic nature of their projects. Here are some key strategies for remaining agile:
Embrace a growth mindset in your change approach: Adopt a mindset that values continuous learning, adaptability, and continuous improvement. Embrace new change tactics, methodologies, technologies, and tools that enhance your change management capabilities. Try new digital or automation solutions.
Develop strong relationship-building skills: Cultivate effective relationships with stakeholders and maintain open lines of communication. Building trust and rapport enables better collaboration and facilitates agility in responding to shifting stakeholder needs. By doing this, you can have much more influence on your stakeholders.
Stay informed and anticipate change: Continuously monitor industry trends, technological advancements, and organizational dynamics. Anticipate potential disruptions and proactively adjust your change plans to accommodate evolving circumstances. This requires strong business acumen.
Foster personal resilience: Change management can be challenging, particularly when faced with unexpected changes. Develop personal resilience by cultivating emotional intelligence, stress management techniques, and the ability to adapt to new circumstances. To lead and influence your stakeholders you need to be their anchor.
In an era of ongoing disruptions and environmental challenges, agility has emerged as a crucial capability for organizations embarking on change initiatives. Change practitioners play a pivotal role in designing and incorporating agility into their change planning and implementation efforts.
By embracing iterative approaches, fostering a culture of experimentation, encouraging collaboration, and prioritizing flexibility, change practitioners can drive agility within their organizations. Additionally, by developing a growth mindset, nurturing strong relationships, staying informed, and fostering personal resilience, change practitioners can remain agile in the face of evolving business decisions, stakeholders, and environments. Embracing agility in change management is key to successfully navigating the ever-changing landscape of the digital world.
Change is an inevitable part of, not just corporate life and business processes, but life in general. It’s a natural occurrence that we all must face at some point. But despite the many benefits that organizational change can bring, many of us are still reluctant to embrace it. After all, for many, it is easier to keep doing the same thing than to do something different and unknown. With the unknown comes risks of disruption and a desire for consistency. Risks that may be scary. Risks that things may be worse than the current scenario.
Often resistance to change can be thought of as an outcome of bad change management. If you don’t effectively manage your stakeholders or have not effectively assessed the impact of change, there are likely going to be common reasons for root causes of resistance for change resistance, including a lack of confidence among stakeholders. Resistance may arise from bad change interventions, including ineffective consultation or engagement of stakeholders.
However, sometimes despite everything you’ve done. You’ve ticked every box and followed almost a ‘textbook’ approach to the change process. Despite this, you are still getting change resistance from some stakeholder groups. Why is this happening?
Sometimes there may be very few levers you can pull in preventing the resistance. You’ve gotten your leadership cohorts to reinforce and evangelize the purpose and benefits of the change. You’ve tried all you can to reach the hearts not just the minds of what you think impacted employees want to hear.
Why is this happening? It could be the fear of failure or loss aversion that has led to the resistance. This is the research-backed fact that people tend to have a cognitive bias where the pain of losing is much stronger than the pleasure of gaining.
One example of this phenomenon is why people stay in bad marriages. Despite the obvious benefits of leaving an unhappy marriage, many people still choose to stay in it. This is because they fear the loss of familiarity, comfort, and security that their marriage provides. This is despite how unhappy they honestly are in the marriage. They may also be afraid of the unknown or the changes that come with divorce. These same fears and reluctance to change can also be seen in organizations and their team members facing change.
For something less dramatic, another example could be changing phones. We are wedded to our phones for a big chunk of how we run our lives. Changing a phone operating system, brand, or even model can be a quite a change that a lot of people are not inclined to go through, until they are pushed to do it.
When organizations decide to implement successful changes, they often focus on the potential benefits that will come from the change, including the introduction of a new product line. They may present a logical argument for why the change is necessary and how it will benefit everyone involved. However, even with a clear and logical argument, people may still be reluctant to embrace change. This is because change often means loss, even if it is the loss of something negative or unwanted.
For example, if an organization decides to implement new software, employee resistance may occur even if it will make their jobs easier and more efficient. This is because they are comfortable with the current system, and they fear the unknown as a significant cause of resistance, or the potential loss of job security and skills that they have developed with the current system. They may also fear that the new system will require them to learn new skills or take on new responsibilities, stemming from their fear of the unknown. This can be despite your best efforts to create a positive picture of the end state.
There are still lots of examples in organisations where employees prefer to stick to their current manual ways of work using spreadsheets, versus the more efficient and effective digital tools.
They may have created the spreadsheet themselves. They may have spent months building consensus across the organisation to use this process. Changing this process could mean not only a lack of familiarity, but it could also result in a loss of their ‘importance’ of their role. So as a result, people continue to maintain the status quo. Stay within the comfort zone. After all, if they don’t change, they can’t be ‘blamed’ if something goes wrong.
As change practitioners, we cannot just blame those impacted by the change. We may also need to see if this applies to us. For example, a lot of change practitioners still use manual spreadsheets to create a ‘single view of change’ despite the amount of manual work that is required. They may have faced leaders who question the integrity of the rating system or become ‘bored’ with the same heatmap or chart since they can’t use it to make black-and-white business decisions. But, fear of the unfamiliarity dominates.
Organizations need to recognize this fear of loss and work to address it in line with their organizational goals, as clarity is essential in managing change. Here are some practical suggestions for designing change initiatives that can help tackle this barrier:
1. Look at the data about how your target employees have responded to different types of changes in the past. What types of responses were there with a certain type or volume of change? How were these dealt with? What were the outcomes? What types of employees were more ‘resistant’ than others?
2. Communicate Clearly, Early and Transparently: Slow change adopters may need more time to prepare for change and what it means for them. Involving key stakeholders as part of the communication process can clarify available options if they do not like the end state. What if they disagree? Communication should be clear, transparent, and empathetic. It should focus on the benefits of the change, and address any concerns or fears employees may have. It should also focus on what would happen if the changes are not adopted.
3. Involve employees in the Change Process (where it makes sense): Inviting employees to participate in the change process can help them feel more invested in the change and less fearful of losing control. When employees have a voice in the decision-making process, they are more likely to feel valued and respected. This also allows businesses to identify potential challenges and concerns that employees may have, which can be addressed before the change is implemented. In addition, setting key metrics can help in evaluating the effectiveness of this approach. This approach may need to be applied carefully, especially when dealing with a highly resistant group of employees. If not carefully managed, the change approach may get out of control.
4. Provide Support: Change can be overwhelming and stressful, especially when employees feel like they are not equipped to handle it. Providing support and training can help employees feel more confident and prepared for the change effort. It can also help them see the benefits of the change more clearly. This may sound like common sense. But it’s amazing how many change initiatives don’t provide any support to impacted groups, beyond technical support.
5. Celebrate Successes: Change can be a long and difficult process, so it is essential to celebrate successes in a timely manner along the way. Recognizing and acknowledging employee efforts and successes can help maintain momentum and motivation. This is another seemingly ‘no-brainer’. Designing a series of successes helps create positivity.
6. Be Patient: Change takes time, and employees need time to adjust. It is essential to be patient and understanding. Rushing the process or ignoring employees’ concerns can lead to resistance and resentment. In your change readiness assessment or strategic plan during the baselining phase of the project, if you’ve found that change adoption could be slow and resistance could be expected, ensure you’ve factored in sufficient timing.
Change is difficult, even when it makes logical sense and has many benefits. People are often afraid of losing something, even if it is something negative or unwanted, which can lead to discomfort. Organizations need to recognize this fear of loss and work to address it when implementing changes. Recognising this cognitive bias is the first step. By providing support, and resources, and involving employees in the change process, organizations can help reduce the fear of loss and successfully implement change.
Rethinking Change Champions Beyond the Project Lens
For decades, the change champion has been a familiar figure in large-scale transformation projects – the trusted liaison between the change team and the business, responsible for rallying colleagues, answering questions, and providing on-the-ground feedback.
But in most organisations, they are treated as short-term, disposable resources: assembled for a single initiative, tasked with helping during deployment, and then disbanded as soon as the project reaches steady state.
This project-by-project approach misses a critical opportunity.
Increasingly, forward-thinking organisations are moving towards an enterprise change champion model and treating these roles not as temporary assignments, but as a strategic, cross-project capability that sits at the heart of building a more change-resilient workforce.
Why the Traditional Change Champion Model Falls Short
The conventional change champion construct has obvious strengths:
Champions are close to the ground, embedded in business units, and understand local challenges.
They can translate change plans into the everyday realities of their teams.
They give the project team early warning signs about resistance or readiness issues.
However, the limitations are equally apparent:
Short-Term Focus – Once a deployment is complete, project change champions are often released without retaining the capability they’ve built.
Loss of Internal Expertise – Any lessons learned, trust built, and skills acquired fade quickly when champions return to their ‘day jobs’ without a broader mandate.
Fragmentation – Each project recruits, trains, and manages its own champions independently, leading to inconsistent standards and duplicated engagement with the same stakeholders.
Missed Development Opportunities – Some of the most promising leaders remain untapped between projects.
When organisations experience continuous transformation with multiple overlapping initiatives, with varying scopes and impacts, this ad-hoc model leads to change fatigue and diluted influence.
A Step Change: The Enterprise-Wide Change Champion Network
What It Is
Instead of recruiting champions per project, the enterprise model creates a standing network of empowered, skilled employees and first-line managers who are trained, nurtured, and deployed to support any change in any part of the organisation.
They operate at two primary levels:
Employee-level champions – embedded in day-to-day operations, they bring peer credibility and act as the first touchpoint for change comms and readiness checks.
First-line manager champions – supervisory-level influencers who bridge the gap between leadership and frontline teams, actively managing the people side of change.
In addition, division-level representatives coordinate champion activity across their area and connect with the enterprise portfolio of changes. Some may sit in operational planning, HR, or directly in an enterprise change team, depending on organisational structure.
The Case for a Longer Term Champion Network
Change execution is not just about effective rollout – it’s about repeatable, scalable ability to change. The enterprise champion model delivers three key benefits that move the needle:
Sustainable Capability – Skills in influencing without authority, creative engagement, and grassroots communication are retained in the organisation.
Faster Time-to-Adoption – Champions already know the frameworks, templates, and rhythms of engagement, so each new change ramps up quickly.
Talent Pipeline – Champions gain visibility, influencing opportunities, and leadership exposure, making them prime candidates for promotion into leadership, project, or change roles. Many organisations using this model have inadvertently built a ‘leadership incubator’ in the process.
Selecting the Right Champions: Intake Principles
Not every employee is suited to being a champion. The selection criteria are critical to ensuring the network is both high-performing and credible:
Motivation – Champions must see value in playing the role, both intrinsically (desire to help the organisation evolve) and extrinsically (career growth, recognition).
Communication Skills – Ability to translate technical or abstract change messages into plain language for peers.
Coordination and Influence – Capable of corralling colleagues, keeping engagement high, and working across both formal reporting lines and informal networks.
The intake process should feel purposeful. This is not “volunteering” in the casual sense – it’s joining a professional network with enterprise significance.
Beyond Cheerleading: Shaping Change from the Ground Up
Traditional change champions too often become just “posters and cupcakes” – the enthusiastic promoters of a change, but with little voice in how it is planned or measured.
In the enterprise model, champions:
Raise Awareness – in ways that are relevant to their teams and culture, rather than relying on corporate one-size-fits-all messaging.
Sense-Check Readiness – gathering feedback and sentiment before key milestones, providing accurate insight back to project and leadership teams.
Design Local Engagement – creating tailored activities that make the change tangible and exciting.
Co-Own Measurement – participating in tracking adoption and readiness, and linking these to operational performance where relevant.
This measurement element is powerful. If champions see what is changing, when, and how much across the enterprise, they can better pace local adoption and avoid overwhelming their teams.
Now we turn to the how: the design, governance, and development practices that make an enterprise-wide change champion network a strategic business capability — trusted by leaders, respected by peers, and seen as a genuine driver of change adoption and organisational learning.
1. Designing the Enterprise Change Champion Model
A well-performing network of champions doesn’t rely on goodwill alone. It’s a deliberate, resourced capability with defined structure, integration points, and a clear operating rhythm.
a. Network Tiers
The most effective enterprise models feature three interconnected levels:
Local Champions (Employee Level)
Embedded within everyday operations.
Directly influence peers through trust and credibility.
Ensure changes are contextualised for their specific work environment.
First-Line Manager Champions
Serve as change role models for their teams.
Help translate strategic initiatives into operational priorities.
Manage workload balance between BAU and transformation demands.
Divisional / Functional Representatives
Coordinate local champions within their function or geography.
Interface with enterprise-level change, HR, or operational planning teams.
Escalate systemic adoption risks or barriers.
b. Integration with the Enterprise Operating Rhythm
Champions must be integrated into core business cycles, not treated as an “extra thing they do in their spare time”:
Quarterly Business Reviews – Include updates on change readiness and adoption.
Operational Meetings – Reserve time for upcoming change briefings.
Annual Planning – Involve champions in pipeline awareness so they can pace change delivery for their teams.
This ensures the network’s role is embedded, not bolted on.
2. Governance: Balancing Structure with Flexibility
A champion network requires governance to maintain credibility, but too much rigidity can limit creativity and ownership. Senior practitioners should consider:
a. Clear Mandate
Document the network’s remit:
To build and sustain readiness for change across the enterprise.
To surface ground-level issues early.
To contribute to measuring change adoption.
This clarity prevents champions from being used as “free event organisers” rather than strategic enablers.
b. Sponsorship
High-performing networks have active executive sponsorship, ideally within the executive team, ensuring:
Visibility at the top table.
Authority to escalate blockers.
Access to resources.
c. Role Tenure and Rotation
Typical tenure: 18–30 months, with renewal based on performance and availability.
Regular rotation broadens exposure for more employees, refreshes energy in the network, and reduces burnout from continuous change advocacy.
An enterprise network will only be as strong as its learning and development program. Champions need more than “change updates” – they need targeted skill-building.
a. Core Skills Curriculum
Influencing Without Authority – Building informal power and trust networks.
Change Fundamentals – Understanding models, frameworks, and adoption levers.
Storytelling for Change – Shaping narratives that inspire action.
Sentiment Analysis – Gathering and interpreting feedback on readiness and concerns.
Metrics Literacy – Understanding change dashboards and linking people data with performance outcomes.
b. Experiential Development
Shadowing Project Teams – To understand the “engine room” of change delivery.
Rotations Across Divisions – Cross-pollination of experience and approaches.
Facilitating Workshops – Hands-on leadership of engagement activities.
c. Recognition and Career Pathways
If you want the best people to step forward as champions, you need to position it as a career accelerator:
Formal credits in performance reviews.
Priority consideration for emerging leadership or project roles.
Public recognition in forums or internal comms.
4. Linking Champions to Change Metrics: Data as an Engagement Tool
One of the most powerful enablers of an enterprise champion network is visibility of change data– not just for executives, but for the champions themselves.
When champions can see:
The enterprise change portfolio – what’s coming, when, and where.
Impact heatmaps – the degree of change affecting each function.
Adoption trends – progress metrics by region, team, or process.
…they can better inform their local teams, manage change saturation, and proactively address pockets of resistance.
Champion-Led Reporting Loops
Champions provide local sentiment and engagement data back to the change and leadership teams.
This creates two-way measurement, balancing top-down project metrics with authentic ground-level insight.
5. Sustaining Momentum Over Time
Even the most enthusiastic champion cohorts can lose energy without deliberate momentum-building mechanisms. Senior leaders can embed sustainability by:
Regular Cohort Events – Quarterly summits to refresh skills, share success stories, and align on upcoming priorities.
Recognition Rituals – Spotlighting champions who have made significant local impact.
Knowledge Hubs – Digital platforms to share templates, tools, and peer insights.
Graduation Paths – Allowing champions to “graduate” to advanced roles (e.g., mentoring new champions or stepping into change leadership roles).
Proving Impact, Embedding Talent Pipelines, and Cultivating a Change-Agile Culture
Previously we explored the rationale for shifting to an enterprise-wide change champion model and how to design, govern, and develop a high-performing network. Now we close the loop by focusing on how to demonstrate return on investment (ROI), embed the champion network into talent and leadership pipelines, and drive a culture where agility and change readiness are organisational norms.
1. Demonstrating the Strategic Impact and ROI of the Champion Network
Transformation leaders need to show tangible value to maintain investment in the champion model. This requires defining and tracking the right measures across multiple dimensions:
a. Change Adoption Metrics
Speed to Adoption: Time taken for teams to reach defined levels of new process or tool usage.
Adoption Volume: Percentage of the workforce actively using or complying with the change.
Resistance Incidence: Frequency and severity of resistance signals identified via champions.
b. Employee Engagement and Sentiment
Regular pulse surveys co-designed with champions to gauge readiness, concerns, and morale.
Qualitative feedback from champions about barriers and enablers on the ground.
c. Talent Development Outcomes
Promotion and role progression rates of change champions.
Retention of champions compared to peer groups.
Champion participation rates in subsequent change initiatives.
d. Business Performance Linkage
Where possible, correlate change adoption rates with key performance indicators affected by the transformation (e.g., productivity improvement, customer satisfaction, error reduction).
The narrative around these metrics should highlight how the champion network reduces risk, accelerates change, and strengthens leadership pipelines—making it easier to secure ongoing support and resources.
2. Embedding the Champion Network into Talent and Leadership Pipelines
One of the most powerful aspects of an enterprise change champion model is its ability to develop future leaders through hands-on, cross-functional change experience:
a. Career Pathway Integration
Define clear career pathways linking champion roles to leadership, project management, and change leadership positions.
Include champion experience as a valued skill in performance appraisals and promotion criteria.
b. Succession and Rotation Planning
Rotate champions through different business units and change projects to broaden their exposure.
Use the network as a talent pipeline, actively identifying high-potential employees for targeted development.
c. Leadership Sponsorship and Mentorship
Engage senior leaders as sponsors for champions, providing mentorship and visibility on strategic initiatives.
Create mentorship programs pairing seasoned change professionals with champions to accelerate learning.
When treated seriously as a talent development program, the champion network becomes a leadership incubator that benefits the organisation far beyond the immediate change portfolio.
3. Cultivating a Change-Agile Culture through the Champion Model
Beyond skills and metrics, the enterprise champion model shapes an organisation’s cultural DNA by embedding change agility as a norm:
a. Peer Influence and Grassroots Advocacy
Champions serve as trusted peers who normalize change discussions, reducing fear and uncertainty.
Their ongoing active involvement signals to employees that change is continuous and manageable.
b. Building Collective Ownership
Shared responsibility for success is fostered as champions co-own change outcomes with leadership and project teams.
This prevents change being viewed as “something done to us” and instead as “something we drive together.”
c. Transparent Communication and Feedback Loops
Regular updates from champions create a two-way dialogue between employees and leaders.
Transparent sharing of data and progress builds trust and accountability.
d. Resilience and Adaptability
The readiness and skills of champions help the organisation respond dynamically to shifting priorities and emerging challenges.
4. Case Study Insights: Organisations Leading with Enterprise Change Champions
Many organizations have reaped significant benefits from this approach:
A global financial services firm reported a 30% faster adoption rate for technology transformations after establishing an enterprise champion network, alongside measurable improvements in employee engagement during change windows.
A large insurer credits their champion network with preventing change fatigue across multiple simultaneous programs by pacing adoption and tailoring communications locally, thereby maintaining high service continuity.
These examples highlight that a well-designed enterprise champion model is more than a support function. It is a strategic enabler of organisational resilience and talent development.
Closing Thoughts
Building a sustainable enterprise change champion model requires commitment, structure, and investment. But the payoff is clear: an organisation equipped not only to execute change more effectively but to cultivate the next generation of leaders who understand change at a deep level.
By proving impact through metrics, integrating champions into career pathways, and cultivating a culture of collective ownership and agility, senior change and transformation practitioners can transform their organisations into change-ready powerhouses.
If you’re keen on setting up an enterprise change champion group powered by change data insights, reach out and chat to us.
It used to be that change management is the ‘poor’, neglected cousin of other disciplines in terms of access to functional software to assist in its performance across every aspect of change and risk management. There is a wide range of software available for a range of project management disciplines such as, business analysis, testing, project management, portfolio management, etc. However, for change management, the pickings have been almost non-existent 10 years ago.
Fast forward to 2022, there is now a handful of change management software in the market to assist with various work categories for the change manager. However, there is still ways to go in the understand of organisational change management in the marketplace. Compilations of change management software offering on the internet is usually a mixture of all types of software, many of which are not organisational change management in nature, and instead, technical change management (used by IT folks). For example https://orgmapper.com/change-management-tool/
How does a change management process help a company?
A change management process helps a company by providing a structured approach to minimizing disruptions and transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It minimizes resistance, enhances communication, and ensures that changes align with business goals, ultimately leading to smoother transitions and improved outcomes.
How can change management software help the change practitioner?
What is the implementation of change management?
The implementation of change management involves a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It includes strategies for managing resistance, communication plans, and training initiatives to ensure that changes are adopted effectively and sustainable within the organization.
Project change delivery
The vast majority of change management professionals in the industry are focused on delivering projects and implementing effective change management strategies to enable them to make an informed decision about their approach. It’s no wonder that most change management tools, including project management software and various change tools, are focused to support the entire change process and project delivery as a result, maintaining consistency throughout all initiatives. What are some of the areas in which project change delivery work can be made easier by software?
1. Automating change management deliverable work
A significant part of the work of change management professionals is spent on preparing for and documenting a clear roadmap of change management deliverables. These include detailed impact assessment, learning plan, stakeholder matrix, and type of change plans, etc. These deliverables are critical documents which are critical dependency for other project milestones. For example, stakeholder analysis and matrix is critical before broader stakeholder engagement can be made, since the analysis reveals who the stakeholders are and how they may be engaged throughout the change process.
One of the biggest pains faced by change management professionals is the amount of time required to manually create these deliverable documents. The work can be tedious, requiring weeks of manual work to complete. For example, the stakeholder matrix document can be a brain-numbing piece of activity, wading through a data dump of the organisational directory to determine every Tom, Dick and Harry which titles and names should be included in the stakeholder list for the project. Then, a lot of similar information then must be re-typed and entered into different versions in other change management deliverable documents such as detailed impact assessment or learning needs analysis, ultimately affecting customer satisfaction.
Software can automate much of the manual work involved. For example, Change Automator, a robust workflow automation software, allows the ease of use to link data already captured earlier on in the project, such as the relevant stakeholders matrix, with other change management deliverables such as detailed impact assessment, to ensure the right people are involved and to minimise manual re-work. With the ability to track changes, any data updated in one document will therefore update content in other documents, including integrations with tools like Power BI. This then saves on the tedious re-work required when data is updated or changes, which is pretty much a given throughout the project lifecycle. From a quality perspective, this also ensures any human-error is reduced in the data that should be synchronised across documents.
A common risk in change management delivery is that stakeholders may be left out inadvertently, or that a previously captured stakeholder in the stakeholder matrix is left out in the engagement process due to human-error. The impact of this type of error can be disastrous to the outcome of the project. Having cross-linked documents in one central place reduces the risk for this type of error.
2. Change management survey (readiness and adoption)
A key part of change management success is through careful monitoring of stakeholders throughout the change process to ensure visibility. In the earlier part of the project, this involves understanding to what extent stakeholders may be clear of the objectives of the project, their roles in it, and general awareness. Later on in the project, it could be more on understanding their engagement level of support which can be a predictor of ultimate adoption and overall support for the change. This overall change readiness level should be monitored across the project through surveys or interviews.
Surveys are inherently time consuming to design, administer and report manually. Significant time can be taken throughout each phase of the survey process. This is a no-brainer in terms of using a software tool. Most projects use Microsoft Forms or SurveyMonkey to do the job. However, you may want more robust features such as conditional question design, for example, if a respondent answers ‘yes’ for not supporting the change, then an additional question pops up to ask why.
Surveys can include sentiment analysis where the focus of the survey is on any shifts in stakeholder feelings and attitudes toward the project. In this case, it is critical to define in detail the characters of each stakeholder group in concern. These would then determine respondent characteristics to measure in the survey design.
There are also tools that measure employee sentiments through corporate social media channels such as Yammer and Teams. For example, Swoop Analytics can help to measure collaboration styles and other behavioural insights about how employees interact with each other on those channels. The data map can reveal key influencers and core influential network connectors.
The biggest value of change surveys lies in the reporting. Most survey tools offer fairly simple reporting using bar charts or pie charts. For short, simple surveys these may suffice. However, if you are working on a fairly detailed change adoption tracking survey, more advanced reporting features may be required. You may want to easily change the colour scheme of the chart, change different chart types, identify anomalies and trends, or highlight certain parts of the data to make it easier for your audience.
3. Project change reporting
Having the ease and flexibility of experimenting with different chart designs is critical for stakeholder impact. If you need hours of work to come up with a few charts the likelihood is that you will not bother. Some stakeholders may also have various personal preferences which can easily take significant time to modify. This is especially when you need the time to focus on engaging with your stakeholders, rather than tweaking excel spreadsheets.
Creating the right AI dashboard can create significant impact on stakeholders and help achieve your change objectives. Data speaks for itself and the right data visualisation can create memorable impact more than words alone. If you are driving toward change adoption, then having an AI-enhanced dashboard of core behaviour changes and tracked capability shifts, along with key metrics and key features, can act as a core part of change governance conversations. With a monthly cadence of reviewing these core data points, stakeholders can hold each other accountable to understand remaining work involved and zoom in on how to drive full change adoption.
Change reporting may not be limited to just survey results. Even seemingly ‘boring’ spreadsheet data such as detailed impact assessment may be easily turned into highly visual and interesting reports to help stakeholders understand what the changes mean and how different groups are impacted by the change.
One of the more popular ways in which change delivery has adopted software is in leveraging digital tools that provide functions to onboard or train users of new or changed systems. There are numerous providers in this area. These include WalkMe, UserGuiding, and Userlane.
Most of the tools provide similar functions to help walk users through interfaces of the system and even allow interactive experience where users can be tested in clicking on the right part of the system as a part of the training or onboarding process. The application is always for system interfaces since the tool only supports web-based systems.
Change capability
Another way in which change management software may assist change practitioners is in building change management capabilities related to change capability and documentation methodologies. There are various tools that help to measure, track, and report on change management activities and assess the impact of change initiatives, including key performance indicators and change impact analysis. This clarity could be that you would like to measure the change leadership skills of leaders, change alignment agility of stakeholder groups, or test employees as a part of skills assessment to ensure they have the right skills for the new system or process.
Using change management software, you can easily pre-program test items and answers to make it easy for yourself to score and tabulate audit test results without any manual work. You can also assign weightings to different questions to evaluate the capability of the respondent as a part of an assessment. You can even configure the assessment to provide results to the respondent at the end of the assessment, and email the feedback as well. Generally, these features are only offered as a part of a learning management system where significant time and effort is required to prepare the system for the assessment. Now, digital tools offer easy point-and-click features, with pre-configured templates saving you significant time and cost.
Change portfolio management
Managing a portfolio of initiatives used to be an approach only adopted by more mature organisations. However, with the rapid pace and intensity of changes, more and more organisations are adopting this approach to manage multiple initiatives.
Managing a portfolio of initiatives can only be done via data. There is already a myriad of project portfolio management systems in the market to help PMOs and project portfolio managers manage a slew of initiatives. The focus of project portfolio management systems is on project timelines, cost, resourcing, etc.
Change portfolio management focuses on the impact of changes and how they may impact the organisation across initiatives. There is also focus on change delivery resourcing and change capability development. One of the most critical pain points faced by organisations is change saturation and change fatigue. To better manage a portfolio of initiatives from a change perspective and manage potential change saturation, data is required.
Effective change portfolio management tools can help you:
Identify and plot change saturation points for different parts of the organisation
Identify risk levels of potential change saturation across roles, locations, layers of the organisations, etc.
Assess to what extent changes may be better delivered as an integrated package to one part of the organisation, or broken down to smaller, more digestable chunks
Assess to what extent changes may be better aligned and delivered through integrated messaging from an impacted stakeholder perspective (vs. from project perspective)
In summary, there are many strong reasons why change management professionals should adopt digital change management solutions to achieve greater change outcomes as well as to automate the tedious parts of the work to gain time to spend with stakeholders. With the ever increasing pace of digitisation in organisations, change management must also follow suit in digitising itself. Just as we could use modern fabrication techniques to build skyscrapers that are stronger and more resilient vs using traditional brick and mortar, so should change managers in leveraging digital tools to support digital transformations.
Creating a strategic approach to effective communication and a change management plan and change management strategy in change management is one of the most important pieces of work for the change management practitioner. Done well, proactive change management communication can drive the change initiative to success by instilling a sense of urgency among stakeholders. If not crafted carefully, it can lead the project to its downfall even before the project starts. A good communication strategy and change strategy should be logical, fact based, clear, and uphold honesty. Yet, despite its importance, strategic change management is one of the least understood aspects of the change management process.
A key pitfall for the change practitioner in devising an effective change management strategy is to create one that is ‘cookie cutter’ and ‘generic’. Creating a detailed plan and a generic change strategy is very easy, not because the change practitioner is lazy or is incompetent, but mostly because there is usually a standard and acknowledged ‘way of doing things around here’ in organisations.
Organisations are used to doing things in certain ways and this is often incorporated as a part of the ‘culture’. ‘The way we do things around here’ is often the impetus by which stakeholders reinforce the ‘status quo’ of implementing change in a particular way. This is because ‘this way’ has always worked in the past and is what people are used to.
What’s wrong with using the status quo you may ask? Well, sometimes it may be the best way, but not always. Why? Because not all changes, especially **organizational changes**, are the same.
Changes come in all shapes and sizes, with some large multi-year transformations having disruptions, whilst others are small process improvements. There are also different types of changes, ranging from significant organizational leadership restructuring that impact the entire organization and company culture, connecting business strategy to system implementation through to new product launches. Some changes may require a highly structured approach, process-centric implementation methods that incorporate best practices such as a regulatory process change, which can enhance the likelihood of success. Other changes may be better with a more agile approach, such as transformation programs focused on continuous improvement to improve customer centricity.
Rather than asking what the stakeholders think would be the best change strategy or approach, take a fact-based approach utilizing workplace analytics. If possible, refer to previously implemented changes as benchmarks or comparison yard-sticks. Ask your stakeholders how previously implemented changes fared against their respective change management strategies.
Key points of your research should include the following:
Size/Complexity of the change
Context/Type of change
Numbers of people impacted
Length of the project
Engagement and communication approaches taken
Stakeholder education and influencing approaches taken
Stakeholder responses and engagement levels
Lessons learnt and what worked or did not work
Taking a benchmark approach to developing a change strategy ensures that you take into account the facts of what worked and did not work. You also take into account differences in the change initiatives and how these could have impacted the change strategy taken and therefore the corresponding outcomes. Where possible, use change metrics such as stakeholder responses or survey results. These are powerful indicators of change outcomes against the strategies taken.
Most change management strategies are not strategies
If you review change management strategies devised across initiatives, you will find that most change strategies are not actually strategies, but a compilation of change tactics. These change tactics are a list of aspirational ‘philosophies’ that may be nice to have but there is no real way of knowing how these drive the project to success.
Let’s look at some examples of these change tactics.
Be transparent and truthful. This is a common used one, where the goal is to be as authentic and truthful as possible with the goal of gaining trust of impacted stakeholders. This means not intending to making the messaging overly positive, and erring on the side of being as realistic as possible. This may be hard to implement if Corporative Affairs or Internal Communications does not agree with this approach.
Involve stakeholders in designing the change. This is another popular aspiration for change initiatives. The thinking is to be as inclusive as possible to include a range of stakeholders in the design and implementation of the change, so as to maximise engagement. The more engaged targeted stakeholders are the higher the changes of change adoption success.
Strong senior leader sponsorship. Thanks to a wide range of books and literature touting the importance of gaining senior leader sponsorship, this is another common one. Yes, having senior leaders driving the change will go a long way toward ensuring change outcome success. However, this in itself may not be sufficient. Again, depending on the type of change it maybe better to have a bottom-up, grass roots approach, rather than a top down approach.
All of the above change tactics may seem sound and logical. And they probably are. However, the whole point of a change strategy is not to list out a set of tactics, principles or philosophies. There could be a very long list of seemingly logical tactics. It also may not be possible or realistic to commit fully to every tactic.
Change strategy is about deciding what top few change approaches will be taken that will directly drive the most initiative success. This means that the change practitioner must start with the project targets and objectives. These should be as black and white indicators. For example, increase customer satisfaction by 10%, increase efficiency by 20%, or increase customer responses by 40%.
Now that you have identified the project targets and objectives from the project manager, you now need to identify change management requirements. For example, to increase efficiency by 10%, the project needs to ensure that the customer service representatives follow the new process 100% of the time. To do this, the project may need to design a series of audit and system notification processes to reinforce this behaviour. From a change management perspective your requirement could be ensuring that the report is built into and discussed by the relevant leaders and teams. Also, that the performance scorecard for concerned roles have built in these metrics.
Let’s take another example. To increase customer satisfaction by 20% the project needs to ensure that frontline agents know how to have the right type of conversations with customers. The change management requirement could be to instil continual coaching and feedback to drive continual skills uplift that is based on competency ratings. The Change strategy would then be driving competency based uplift.
In this way you can see that each part of the change strategy directly contributes to reaching the project targets. The direct contribution of each change strategy can then be evaluated in terms of its contribution importance.
So now you know how to devise a change strategy that directly contributes to the goals of the project. Your change management work should be geared around driving this strategy. And the contribution of your work should be clear and explicit. It should not be brushed aside as a ‘nice to have’ or too ‘soft and fluffy’.
If you want to learn more about creating the right change management metrics, visit The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Change.
Creating the right change management strategy is an important step. Even more important throughout the implementation of the project is how you monitor and adapt to the challenges that come your way. Change strategies may need to be tweaked or revised depending on the data you’re seeing along the way. To find out more about how to leverage data to resolve the most challenging questions during your change journey chat to us about how The Change Management platform can help.
