CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS

The change management process is the sequence of steps or activities that a change
management team or project leader follow to apply change management to a change in
order to drive individual transitions and ensure the project meets its intended outcomes.
The below elements have been identified from research as key elements of a
successful change management process.

These elements are incorporated into Prosci’s 3-Phase Process. Learn more about
Prosci’s methodology and how to apply it to achieve better outcomes.

Here are the nine elements of a successful change management process:

1. READINESS ASSESSMENTS

Assessments are tools used by a change management team or project leader to assess the
organization's readiness to change. Readiness assessments can include organizational
assessments, culture and history assessments, employee assessments, sponsor assessments
and change assessments. Each tool provides the project team with insights into the challenges
and opportunities they may face during the change process. What to assess:

Assess the scope of the change:

 How big is this change?

 How many people are affected?
 Is it a gradual or radical change?

Assess the readiness of the organization impacted by the change:

 What is the value-system and background of the impacted groups?

 How much change is already going on?
 What type of resistance can be expected?
You will also need to assess the strengths of your change management team and change
sponsors, then take the first steps to enable them to effectively lead the change process.
 2. COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNICATION PLANNING

Many managers assume that if they communicate clearly with their employees, their job is done.
However, there are many reasons why employees may not hear or understand what their
managers are saying the first time around. In fact, you may have heard that messages need to
be repeated five to seven times before they are cemented into the minds of employees.

Three components of effective communication

Effective communicators carefully consider three components:

1. The audience
2. What is communicated
3. When it is communicated
For example, the first step in managing change is building awareness around the need for
change and creating a desire among employees. Therefore, initial communications are typically
designed to create awareness around the business reasons for change and the risk of not
changing. Likewise, at each step in the process, communications should be designed to share
the right messages at the right time.

Communication planning, therefore, begins with a careful analysis of the audiences, key
messages and the timing for those messages. The change management team or project
leaders must design a communication plan that addresses the needs of frontline employees,
supervisors and executives. Each audience has particular needs for information based on their
role in the implementation of the change.

3. SPONSOR ACTIVITIES AND SPONSOR ROADMAPS

Business leaders and executives play a critical sponsor role in times of change. The change
management team must develop a plan for sponsor activities and help key business leaders
carry out these plans. Research shows that sponsorship is the most important success factor.

Avoid confusing the notion of sponsorship with support

The CEO of the company may support your project, but that is not the same as sponsoring your
initiative. Sponsorship involves active and visible participation by senior business leaders
throughout the process, building a coalition of support among other leaders and communicating
directly with employees. Unfortunately, many executives do not know what this sponsorship
looks like. A change manager or project leader's role includes helping senior executives do the
right things to sponsor the project.

4. CHANGE MANAGEMENT TRAINING FOR MANAGERS

Managers and supervisors play a key role in managing change. Ultimately, the manager has
more influence over an employee’s motivation to change than any other person. Unfortunately,
managers can be the most difficult group to convince of the need for change and can be a
source of resistance. It is vital for the change management team and executive sponsors to gain
the support of managers and supervisors. Individual change management activities should be
used to help these managers through the change process.

Once managers and supervisors are on board, the change management team must prepare a
strategy to equip managers to successfully coach their employees through the change. They will
need to provide training and guidance for managers, including how to use individual change
management tools with their employees.

5. TRAINING DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY

Training is the cornerstone for building knowledge about the change and the required skills to
succeed in the future state. Ensuring impacted people receive the training they need at the right
time is a primary role of change management. This means training should only be delivered
after steps have been taken to ensure impacted employees have the awareness of the need for
change and desire to support the change. Change management and project team members will
develop training requirements based on the skills, knowledge and behaviors necessary to
implement the change. These training requirements will be the starting point for the training
group or the project team to develop and deliver training programs.

6. RESISTANCE MANAGEMENT

Resistance from employees and managers is normal and can be proactively addressed.
Persistent resistance, however, can threaten a project. The change management team needs to
identify, understand and help leaders manage resistance throughout the organization.
Resistance management is the processes and tools used by managers and executives with the
support of the change team to manage employee resistance.

7. EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK AND CORRECTIVE ACTION

Managing change is not a one way street; employee involvement is a necessary and integral
part of managing change. Feedback from employees as a change is being implemented is a key
element of the change management process. Change managers can analyze feedback and
implement corrective action based on this feedback to ensure full adoption of the changes.

8. RECOGNIZING SUCCESS AND REINFORCING CHANGE

Early adoption, successes and long-term wins must be recognized and celebrated. Individual
and group recognition is a necessary component of change management in order to cement
and reinforce the change in the organization. Continued adoption needs to be monitored to
ensure employees do not slip back into their old ways of working.

9. AFTER-PROJECT REVIEW

The final step in the change management process is the after-action review. It is at this point
that you can stand back from the entire program, evaluate successes and failures, and identify
process changes for the next project. This is part of the ongoing, continuous improvement of
change management for your organization and ultimately leads to change competency.

These elements comprise the areas or components of a change management program. Along
with the change management process, they create a system for managing change. Good
project managers apply these components effectively to ensure project success, avoid the loss
of valued employees and minimize the negative impact of the change on productivity and a
company's customers.
 THE 3-PHASE PROCESS: A STRUCTURE FOR
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

Prosci's organizational change management process was first introduced in 2002 after
the third change management benchmarking study. This process is built in three
phases that a project or change manager can work through for the changes and
initiatives they are supporting. The methodology includes research-based assessments
and templates to support each phase, as well as guidance for completing each step
most effectively.

1. Preparing for change

The first phase in Prosci's methodology helps change and project teams prepare for
designing their change management plans. It answers these questions:

 "How much change management does this project need?"

 “Who is impacted by this initiative and in what ways?”
 “Who are the sponsors we need to be involved to make this initiative successful?”
The first phase provides the situational awareness that is critical for creating effective
change management plans. The outputs of this phase are:

1. Change characteristics profile

This provides insight into the change at hand, its size, scope and impact.

2. Organizational attributes profile

This gives a view of the organization and groups that are being impacted and any
specific attributes that may contribute to challenges when changing.

3. Change management team structure

This structure defines how many change management resources are needed for the
effort and where they are positioned in relationship to the project team and project
sponsor

4. Sponsor assessment, structure and roles

This provides an understanding of the leaders across the organization who will need to
act as sponsors of the change. Here we also identify possible challenges with certain
leaders and start to formulate plans to get those leaders on board and actively
sponsoring the change.

5. Impact assessment

This assessment identifies the groups of individuals being impacted by the change, in
what ways they are being impacted, and unique challenges you may face with this
group in the project.

6. Change management strategy

Based on the assessments in this phase, a strategy that scales the change
management effort to align with the type and size of the change is articulated.

2. Managing change
The second phase focuses on creating plans that will integrate with the project plan.
These change management plans articulate the steps that you can take to support the
individual people being impacted by the project. This is what people typically think of
when they talk about change management. Based on Prosci's research, there are five
plans that support help individuals moving through the ADKAR Model:

1. Communication plan

Communications are a critical part of the change process. This plan articulates key
messages that need to go to various impacted audience. It also accounts for who will
send the messages and when, ensuring employees are hearing messages about the
change from the people who have credibility with them and at the right time.

2. Sponsor roadmap

The sponsor roadmap outlines the actions needed from the project’s primary sponsor
and the coalition of sponsors across the business. In order to help executives be active
and visible sponsors of the change, we provide details on when and where we need
leaders to be present, what communications they should send, and which peers across
the coalition they need to align with to support the change.

3. Training plan

Training is a required part of most changes, and is critical to help people build the
knowledge and ability they need to work in a new way. The training plan identifies who
will need what training and when. It is important that the training plan be sequenced in a
way that allows for awareness and desire building before they are sent to training.

4. Coaching plan

The coaching plan outlines how you will engage with and equip managers and people
leaders to lead the change with their own teams. Managers can play a significant role in
aiding the change management efforts, but they need to be engaged as employees
themselves first and allowed to work through their own change process. Then you can
give them the information and tools to lead the same change process with their own
teams.

5. Resistance management plan

The resistance management plan provides a strategy for both proactively and reactively
addressing resistance. At the outset of a project, anticipated areas of resistance can be
identified and proactively planned for: specific activities targeted at potentially resistant
groups. This can head off resistance before it becomes a problem. The resistance
management plan should also include the process and plan for identifying,
understanding, and addressing resistance that comes up throughout the life of the
project.
3. Reinforcing change

Equally critical but most often

overlooked, the third phase helps you create specific action plans for ensuring that the
change is sustained. In this phase, project and change teams develop measures and
mechanisms to measure how well the change is taking hold, to the see if employees are
actually doing their jobs the new way, to identify and correct gaps and to celebrate
success. This includes:

1. Measuring changes in behavior

As the change is being implemented and the solution of the project is going live, it is
important to establish measures to see if people are actually doing their jobs in a new
way. These measures will be unique to each project and based on what new behaviors
are required of employees in the changed state.

2. Corrective action plans

If gaps are identified and people are not fully adopting and using the new way of
working, the change and project team must take action to correct those gaps. It is
important to remember ADKAR in this phase and identify accurately why people may
not be embracing the change and address the root cause of the gap.

3. Reinforcement mechanisms

Because people are physiologically wired for habit, it is common that even though
people may change successfully, they will revert to their old habits unless there are
specific measures in place to prevent them from doing so. Reinforcement mechanisms
can include continued compliance measuring, ongoing training and coaching.

4. Individual and group recognition approaches

It is vitally important to recognize the hard work people have put in to embracing
change. Every person and organization is different, so it is important to look for means
of recognition that will resonate with the individuals.

5. Success celebrations

In addition to recognizing the achievements of individuals and groups who have

changed successfully, it is important to publically highlight the success of the initiative
and provide opportunity to celebrate the hard work that went into getting to a new future
state.

6. After-action review

As is common in project management, an after-action review of the change

management efforts helps to identify strengths of the change effort to be replicated in
future projects, as well as areas where different action should be taken next time to
drive a more successful outcome.

CONNECTING INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The link between individual change management and organizational change

management is key and is what sets Prosci's approach apart from other change
management methodologies. There are numerous models available that address
individual change. There are also numerous models available that give guidance and
structure to the project-level activities for the people side of change. The Prosci
methodology uniquely integrates individual change management and organizational
change management to ensure the achievement of business results.

The image below shows how the change management plans developed in the
organizational change management process contribute to the progression of individual
change described by the ADKAR model. This is the essence of effective change
management and the Prosci methodology: leverage change management activities to
drive individual transitions.