Change Management -

Why Communicate Change is an important step?

1. To identify the key messages from leaders. 2. To promote project benefits as they apply to each of the audiences. 3. To decrease speculation and create an environment for open dialogue. 4. Solicit feedback from employees and provide that feedback to the project leadership. So, communications is not the same as just delivering a message or convincing a group of people to agree with us. It's all about being open to feedback, and getting buy-in, and building momentum for the change.

What is the goal of communication plan?

Communication plans evolve as the project evolves. However, the goal remains the same - to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time from the right source.

6 steps of Change Management

Define The Change Align the leaders Engage the stakeholders Assess the culture Communicate the change Plan the Training

Strategy : How do I staff my project?

Depending on the specific attributes of the company, and the size and complexity of the project, the staff on the change team may include one or several members: a change lead, a change consultant, a communications lead, a communications consultant, a training lead and an instructional designer, training developer, and trainers.

Strategy : How much change management support does my project need?'

'it depends.' A 'one size fits all' approach here is not effective. Each change initiative is unique, and the people side of that change requires a customized approach. The amount of change management support that will be required depends on four factors. 1. the amount of disruption created in the organization. In other words what's the gap between the current state and the future state? How much of an impact will the change create? Is it a large, radical change, or is it a small, incremental change? 2. the organizational attributes, like culture and implementation history. Is it a change- resistant or a change-ready culture? What has been the success rate for implementations in the past? 3. the type of change. Is it a structural change, including job roles, and a new operating model? Or, is it just a systems upgrade? 4. the organization's capability and capacity. How capable is the organization at leading change? Do sponsors know their role? Do they know what it will take to drive change? What is the organization's capacity? In other words, how much change is already occurring at the same time? In summary, if the organization is going through a large change with significant impact to people and jobs; if it's a change-resistant culture, or has poor success with major changes in the past; or it has inexperienced leaders of change, it will require a significant amount of change support. If, on the other hand, the change is relatively small, or if the organization has a strong 'change muscle,' and if the leaders have experience in leading change, then the change resources may not be as robust.

Why Training is required?

1. Change can be intimidating. During a major change, employees may be in turmoil.They may be questioning their job security, or their loyalty to the company, or its commitment to them. 2. To adopt the change, the stakeholders may need new skills in order to be successful. By providing effective training on your new systems and processes, you help people get ready. This alleviate some of the fears that may be associated with what's coming.

What are guiding principles of communication?

1. We start with 'leaders first.' Equip leaders with the information that they need to communicate key messages throughout the project, and make these messages clear, consistent, and authentic. 2. Communicate the right message at the right time to the right audience from the right messenger. And, remember that the most important relationship is between the manager and their direct report. So, cascading communications is very important. 3. Explain the big picture.Place the message in the larger context of the business goals to help stakeholders understand how their role fits in.This helps to motivate them to engage and actually be part of a larger change. 4. And then, over communicate. Repeat messages, using multiple modes of delivery.We always assess for all the modes of communication in an organization, and these vehicles can include emails from leaders, FAQs. roadshows, town halls or maybe even a unique delivery channel, like a project website or an e-newsletter devoted just to your project. A barrier that you can face in the communication step is when feedback is poorly understood. 5.Feedback from stakeholders serves an important function. It provides important information on how to implement in different areas, and it can also provide input to training and further engagement planning. To confront this barrier, ensure that you have two-way communication channels taking place in many different forms. Provide interactive vehicles, like electronic mailboxes, town halls to respond to stakeholders questions and concerns as a live audience.

What is Change Management?

Change management is a structured approach to how we prepare, equip, and support individuals to adopt change and transition to new ways of working.. Change management is a proactive, planned, organized way to implement change. It includes getting people on board, removing barriers, and increasing commitment. This leads to speed in the adoption of the change, and it enhances the culture, while it builds resilience.

How do communications work in lifecycle of project?

Early in the project, communications helped to create awareness. But, effective communications don't just stop there. We want to build understanding and then acceptance of the change. We use communications to help stakeholders adopt new behavior and eventually, to build buy-in and ownership to embed the change. So, the final goal is the realization of our project vision. What should guide us, as we move along this

Why culture matters in driving the change?

Eg of Apple: The first three, excellence, creativity, and innovation, would be motivators in a change initiative. The last two, secrecy and moderate combativeness, may present problems when introducing an organizational change. The key is to be aware of the cultural characteristics. This is so that you can leverage those that may support the culture and minimize those that may be inhibitors. The approach that I use here is to meet with stakeholders, identify the values, behaviors, and unwritten rules of the organization, and then brainstorm and develop mitigation strategies. The deliverables are a summary of the values, behaviors, and unwritten rules, and a strategy to minimize any negative cultural impacts. Knowing the culture provides you with important data to develop strategies to ensure a successful implementation.

How do identify the impact on stakeholders?

Identify the impact that the change will have on the stakeholder: the type of impact, the degree of impact, whether it will affect their job status, their role, their organization, and how will they see the change, as positive or negative. And then, based on this understanding, we can consider how to involve them appropriately in the project.

Provide Sumaary of Stakeholder engagement step?

In summary, the approach for Stakeholder Engagement is to identify the stakeholders who are impacted by the change and understand the employees perception or 'frame of reference.' The deliverables include the Stakeholder Impact Assessment, the Engagement Plan and the Engagement Survey and results. It may also include focus groups to increase understanding and awareness. engaging stakeholders is critical to our success. It starts with assessing their needs, and then planning a variety of strategies in their frame of reference.

What tools you use for stakeholder engagement planning?

It may include surveys to further address their perceptions, either positive or negative, for different groups. It might involve focus groups where employees can share their thoughts and ideas confidentially, and it will include communications, and probably training. The next activity will go into further detail on this Engagement Planning step.

How do you know when you've bumped up against a norm or an unwritten rule?

It's because you feel uncomfortable and out of step.

What makes the culture of an org?

It's made up of three components: the values, behaviors, and unwritten rules. Values are the collective set of beliefs and expectations that people have about the organization: things like teamwork, integrity, and collaboration. The behaviors are the observable actions demonstrated by leaders and employees, in other words, how people treat one another. The unwritten rules are the norms about how we work.

Why should we do changement ?

One, change is taking place in every organization. Mergers and acquisitions, software installations, business expansion, and restructuring, to name a few. Secondly, change is no longer incremental. The nature of business itself is changing, due to technology, innovation, automation, artificial intelligence, etc. And, the third reason is that change is never easy. In fact, failure is more common than success. Research tells us that 60 to 70 percent of key initiatives fail. This should provide strong motivation to focus on managing change effectively in order to achieve the results that we need.

What are some of the challenges you might face during traning?

Some of the challenges that you may face during training are timing and resources. And, the best strategy to overcome these barriers is to work closely with the stakeholders all along the way.

How Stakeholder Impact Assessment is done?

See the image. The stakeholder imapct assessment is done to get high level understanding of stakeholder groups. The red box is the most critical group. You're going to want to address their concerns and actively engage them. The green box - these your champions. Enlist their help to support and embed the change. The blue box are those with low impact and high support. You can involve them as needed to rally the troops. And, the yellow box with low impact and low support: you can just keep them informed. Reflect on your change project and identify the stakeholder groups for the project. And, then plot each group into the Stakeholder Assessment Template, based on the degree of impact and the level of support. This Stakeholder Impact Assessment provides input to begin the engagement planning.

When does Stakeholder engagement happens?

Stakeholder Engagement, however, occurs when the leaders and the project team consider their view, gauge their level of support for the project, and provide appropriate vehicles for their involvement and adoption.

Summary of training phase

The approach here is to assess the training needs, develop a strategy and plan, build a curriculum and guide, deliver, and evaluate. And, your deliverables for the training step are the training strategy and plan, the curriculum design, the target format, and evaluation.

What is stakeholder engagement planning?

The change team will build a Stakeholder Engagement Plan post impact assessment. This may involve further interviews and attending project team meetings to learn more, as the project begins to build. The engagement planning questions include questions like these: What will be the specific impact on each group? What are the costs and benefits or 'what's in it for me' for each group? How will they see the change, and what behavior or actions do we need from each group, in order to implement the change effectively? The plan we create will include activities and strategies to build their involvement.

whats the key challenge in driving change?

The key challenge in driving change is that people don't like change. It's uncomfortable. It's unsettling. We're creatures of habit, and we have to really get up for a challenge in order to face a change. It doesn't come about simply as a result of a survey or a town hall. Think of any kind of change that you've experienced. It might be getting a new job or moving to a new city. It's normal to experience resistance for many reasons. It forces us to think and act differently, to develop new patterns of behavior. We feel a loss of control and a sense of vulnerability. Whether an event is positive or a negative, change places demands upon us, and we experience it in our minds and bodies as stressful. In leading a major change, it's almost inevitable that you will encounter resistance in some form. Signs of resistance in an organization can include poor communication or lack of adoption of the new processes. It might look like low morale, and on the project team, it might be decision paralysis. We need to remember that resistance is a function of disruption. It's an inherent part of any change. It's actually normal. It's inevitable and often an emotional response to a change. We call it the' indirect response to an underlying concern.' And, this was what makes it tricky for the leaders of a change. Stakeholders often express their concerns indirectly, as in the behaviors we just discussed. So, this is how to recognize resistance.

Strategy : How do I integrate the change management into overall initiative?

The key step here is to integrate change management into the project plan itself. Successful change requires layering the art of change management over the science of project management. This diagram shows the typical steps in a project plan across the top, and the key components of change management to the left and across the project. The change components can be customized to fit your project, as needed. By aligning change management and project management, you ensure more integration and synergy between the teams throughout the initiative.

What is change Management

The process of understanding, communicating, and documenting changes to a system so that negative effects from change can be avoided, or at least minimized.

What should training plan include

The training that's needed during a change will emphasize the ways that your current programs or structures will change, or how your processes will be enhanced or improved. It should focus on the knowledge, skills, and capabilities that the stakeholders need, and it should outline the practices that you want employees to follow in the future state. The purpose of building a training strategy is to clarify the scope of the training program; to describe the approach, the assumptions, the issues and concerns of the stakeholders; to confirm an initial plan, the timing the milestones and products; and also to outline the steps necessary to complete the development, review, and delivery. The phases of the training will most likely include design, build, deliver, and evaluate.

What happens if we dont engage stakeholders

negative things tend to occur. Communication breaks down, underlying issues cannot be resolved, sabotage can take place, and rework is required. The speed of implementation gets reduced.

How do recognize the culture?

ome components of the culture are observable at the surface level of the organization, and others lie in the deep culture, aspects that are below the surface. The deep culture is recognized usually through the unwritten rules, 'the way we do things around here.' Usually, these norms are powerful and unspoken.