At every organization, in any industry, people respond to change in different ways. Change management is essential to ensure alignment, help employees navigate through shifts in process, culture, or technology, and ultimately achieve successful outcomes.
At the ASUG Executive Exchange Summit in Seattle, held in August, transformational change leader Karan Froom of KFROOMCO, Ltd. joined managing partner Rob Malench of BlueStar Partners to host a workshop detailing the processes, tools, and techniques that make up effective change management programs. The duo talked about common challenges and shared best practices for overcoming them.
During the workshop, Froom and Malench outlined a five-step approach to get started:
- Build a compelling case.
- Find a strong sponsor.
- Assess change complexity.
- Assemble your team.
- Execute the plan.
Before diving into this approach, it’s important to address common obstacles your organization may face. As the speakers emphasized, if these overarching challenges aren’t thoroughly understood and managed, any initiative could fail—along with its expected ROI.
One of the most common challenges, the speakers explained, is resistance to change. People often resist change for various reasons, and while they may not openly oppose it or leave the organization in response, employees who do not buy into a change initiative can subtly, even subconsciously, undermine the effort in other ways.
Organizations must be prepared to understand individual motivations and concerns to address resistance effectively. Another major barrier is a lack of operational readiness. To tackle this, the speakers recommend conducting readiness assessments upfront, which can help gauge how well the organization is positioned to adapt to proposed changes.
Five Steps to Success
Following a five-step approach, organizations can navigate all manner of challenges throughout the lifecycle of a change management program.
1. Build a compelling case.
It’s important to sell all stakeholders on the potential benefits of proposed changes by clearly describing how the change will benefit each of them individually as well as the organization collectively. Develop a narrative that articulates the positives for each level of the organization. When stakeholders understand what’s in it for them and how a proposed change aligns with the organization’s goals, they will feel more motivated to get on board, despite any residual discomfort.
2. Find a great sponsor.
As with any project, getting the backing of key advocates and champions is critical to the success of a change initiative. Sponsors can enlist support from executive leadership and ensure the initiative stays aligned with both an organization’s strategic goals and the moving parts of overall operations.
3. Measure change complexity.
Evaluate each of the stakeholder groups—considering their perspectives, concerns, and levels of influence—to create a baseline for measuring change complexity. Also, consider how change will affect various roles, processes, and systems. Set and track adoption metrics, defined through KPIs, before and during the program, as well as after everything goes live.
For example, you can measure whether people are using new tools or following new operating procedures, assessing the success of your initiative and gaining insights into additional work that might be required to ensure adoption of new technology or processes. Sometimes, the resulting KPIs will indicate a new round of training is needed. It’s important to realize that effectively measuring change complexity on a rolling basis will help you discern the change initiative’s ROI.
4. Staff your team appropriately.
It’s important to find the right balance when staffing the team that will lead a change management initiative. Often, the staff on such a team will include internal associates who understand the business and processes. In many cases, it’s best to include professionals aligned with different lines of business or business units.
Be sure to have someone on the team who has expertise in change management; if no one within the organization fits the bill, bring on external change management experts who are well-versed in how to run successful initiatives. Make sure the team continually and promptly shares feedback, with feedback loops for ongoing engagement and improvement.
5. Execute your plan.
Putting a change management plan into action starts early in the program’s life cycle. In addition to the four previously outlined steps, this plan includes a variety of planned engagement activities and progress monitoring. Once the change goes into effect, it will be critical to continue promoting and measuring adoption, enforcing compliance, and offering additional training and support as needed. Feedback mechanisms like surveys and real-time polling can help assess adoption levels.
Change is inevitable. But for initiatives to succeed in furthering an organization’s business goals, they need to be properly managed. Froom and Malench advocate for a robust program that is about more than communication and training. Change requires a lot of upfront work, a clear understanding of what a proposed initiative will impact, why this initiative is needed, and how it can and should impact your organization.
Patricia Brown is ASUG’s Editorial Director.
Over the coming weeks and months, ASUG will continue to explore the topics and takeaways from the 2024 ASUG Executive Exchange Summer Summit to drive relevant insights to our member base.