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Chapter 1
p1
As editors of the Change Management Learning Center, we have analyzed
research data from more than 1,000 companies involved in large-scale changes. We talk
daily with project leaders and managers. We write weekly articles and tutorials on
managing the people side of change. We review new books in this field of study. What we
observe more than anything else is the need for easy-to-apply concepts and practical
guidelines for managing change. Yet, up to now, a straightforward introduction to change
management has not been available.
When finished with this book, you will have a basic context for change
management, know why it is important and understand how it is used. As a business manager,
you will be more effective as a change leader and sponsor of change. Specifically, you
will be able to prevent and manage resistance to change, minimize productivity loss, avoid
unnecessary turnover and increase the probability that your business changes produce the
desired results.
p3
The most common barrier to success was a lack of change management. They fell short
when managing the people side of change and encountered:
1. Managers who were unwilling to assign the needed resources to the project or would
not allow their representative adequate time to participate
2. Managers who filtered out important messages or started negative conversations about
the change
3. Employees who became distracted and lost interest in their current work
responsibilities thereby impacting overall productivity and customers
4. Valued employees who left the organization
5. More people taking sick leave or not showing up for work
6. Unforeseen obstacles to the change that seemingly appeared from nowhere
7. A lack of funding for the change
In other words, things did not go exactly as planned. The unexpected happened. Not
managing the people side of change impacted their success and introduced risk into their
projects.
Change management can not only mitigate these business risks, but in many cases avoid
them entirely. Business leaders have the potential to not only manage resistance once it
appears, but to prevent it in the first place. Unfortunately, many business leaders and
project teams do not appreciate their role in managing the people side of change until
after resistance impacts the success of their change.
Two case studies show the potential consequences of not managing the people side of
change. These case studies were selected because they highlight two common leadership
mistakes: first, believing that change management is someone else’s job; second,
ignoring the people side of change until major resistance stalls a project or causes the
project to fail.
p11
Change management is the application of many different ideas from the
fields of engineering, business and psychology. As changes in organizations have become
more frequent and a necessity for survival, the body of knowledge known as "change
management" has also grown to encompass more skills and knowledge from each of these
fields of study. While this may be a good trend overall, the result for many business
leaders is growing confusion about what change management really is.
The purpose of this book is to bring the real
meaning of change management into focus. Written for project managers, business leaders,
change management practitioners and consultants, this book will provide you with a solid
understanding of the principles and processes around managing change in today’s
competitive environment. The overarching goal is to help you begin the journey of
developing competence in managing change. With change management competence comes success
in business change. One important message we strive to convey with this book is that
change management does not need to be difficult or complicated. In fact the core
principles are common sense and easy to understand.
When finished with this book, you will be more
effective as a change leader and sponsor of change. Specifically, you will be able to:
manage employee resistance to change,
build change competency into your organization,
minimize productivity losses and adverse effects on your customers
during major changes,
avoid unnecessary turnover or loss of valued employees, and
increase the probability that your business changes produce the desired
results.
Chapter 2
p14
Understanding the why makes you better at doing the how. Change management
is not a matter of simply following steps. Since no two changes are exactly alike,
following a recipe for change management is not enough. The right approach will be
situation specific. If you do not understand the why, changes can fail even when standard
processes are followed. Research with hundreds of project teams has shown that a "one
size fits all" approach is not sufficient. To be effective at leading change, you
will need to customize and scale your change management efforts based on the unique
characteristics of the change.
To accomplish this customization, an
understanding of the psychology of change and guiding principles is vital. You will then
be able to work with many change management methodologies and adjust your approach
according to the size of the change, ultimately making your change a success.
Primary principles and concepts
The overview of concepts and ideas presented here is not intended to be an
in-depth psychological analysis of change principles. Rather the focus will be on the key
insights from these principles that impact effective application of change management.
Case studies are included including how one million dollars in cash served as a change
management tool.
p40
Summary of change principles
This chapter highlighted key change principles and how they relate to managing change
in the workplace. These theories and principles are essential for managing change with
situational awareness and then making the necessary adjustments including scaling or
modifying the change management process. Understanding and applying these principles will
help you correctly apply the techniques and processes for individual and organizational
change management. In summary the key concepts are:
1. Change agents must be conscious of both a sender’s meaning and a
receiver’s interpretation.
2. Employee resistance is the norm, not the exception. Expect some employees to never
support the change.
3. Visible and active sponsorship is not only desirable but necessary for success.
4. Value systems and the culture of the organization have a direct impact on how
employees react to change.
5. The size and type of the change determines how much and what kind of change
management is needed. Just because a change is small does not mean that change management
is not required.
6. The "right" answer is not enough to successfully implement change.
7. Employees go through the change process in stages and go through these stages as
individuals.
To put these principles into practice, two change management approaches are necessary
as introduced in Chapter 1: the employees’ perspective and the managers’
perspective. Managing change from the employees’ perspective is called individual
change management. Managing change from the managers’ perspective is called
organizational change management. Individual change management is often overlooked by many
change management models. Individual change management includes the tools and processes
that supervisors use with their employees to manage individual transitions through change.
This employee-oriented component of change management is the critical ingredient that
allows a project team to:
1. Help employees through the change process
2. Create a feedback loop to business leaders and identify points of resistance
3. Diagnose gaps in communications and training
4. Implement corrective action
The most powerful change management strategies combine organizational change management
techniques with individual change management tools to create a robust, closed-loop
process. Chapter 3 introduces the process and tools for individual change management.
Chapter 4 integrates these tools with organizational change management techniques
resulting in an overall process for managing change.
Chapter 3
p45
Individual change management is the process of providing tools and
training to employees to enable them to manage their personal transition through change.
This includes training for managers and supervisors to equip them with the tools they need
to assist their employees through the change process.
In this chapter, a model for individual change management called ADKAR is
presented. You will have the opportunity to create an ADKAR profile for someone close to
you and find out how a graduating daughter unlocked the door to change for her father.
The chapter will be dedicated to four change
management objectives that can be achieved using this individual change management model:
Manage personal transitions. Employees can assess where they are in the
change process and identify their own personal barriers to change.
Focus conversations. Communications with employees about the change can
be separated into the stages of a change model to enable productive and focused
conversations centered around their area of interest or conflict.
Diagnose gaps. Collective input from employees provides a diagnosis of
why a change may be failing or is not as effective as planned.
Identify corrective action. The model provides a framework for
identifying corrective actions during the change process.
p53
Too often business leaders fall into the trap of communicating broad and general
messages about change. Employees’ reactions can also be generally broad. The
resulting conversations are non-targeted and often unproductive. Take for example the
announcement of a new software tool for customer order taking. If the change is
implemented and employees believe it was not needed (i.e., they were not aware that any
changes were required), then their reaction might be:
"This is a waste of time."
"Why change if it was working just fine before?"
"They never tell us what’s going on!"
“Our old system was better than this one.”
The natural reaction to change, even in the best circumstances, is to resist. Awareness
of the business need to change is a critical ingredient of any change and must come first.
Chapter 4
p61
Businesses tend to have more managers who believe they have the right
answers to business problems than managers who can effectively implement good ideas. As a
leadership competency, change management is often lacking. The political environment
combined with employee resistance stops many managers from being true leaders of change.
Organizational change management is the
application of a systematic process for managing change across an organization. It is the
top-down, manager’s approach to taking an organization through the transition from
today to a new future state.
In this chapter we will provide an overview of a
comprehensive, research-based change management process. We will discuss how individual
change management tools and organization-wide tools are combined to effectively manage the
change. We will also show how damage control can end up being the focus of the day if
change management is started too late.
Recall from the theories and principles of change
discussion that change is a process. Managing change from an organizational viewpoint is
also a process. Based on Prosci’s research in change management over the course of
three separate studies with more than 500 organizations, the most effective change
management process consists of three phases:
Phase 1 - Preparing for change
Phase 2 - Managing change
Phase 3 - Reinforcing change
p66
Phase 2 - Managing change includes the design of the organizational change management
plans and individual change management activities. This second phase of change management
involves the planning and implementation of:
• Communication plans
• Coaching plans
• Training plans
• Sponsor roadmaps
• Resistance management plans
Communication plan - Many managers assume that if they communicate clearly with their
employees, their job is done. Recall from Chapter 2 and the principles of change that
there are many reasons why employees may not hear or understand what their managers are
saying. You may have heard that messages need to be repeated 6 to 7 times before they are
cemented into the minds of employees. That is because each employee’s readiness to
hear depends on the many factors discussed in Chapter 2.
Effective communicators carefully consider three components: the audience, what is said
and when it is said. For example, the first step in managing change is building awareness
around the need for change and creating a desire among employees. Therefore, the initial
communications should be designed to create awareness around the business reasons for
change and the risk of not changing.
These early communications should not be cluttered with details that will distract from
the key messages. 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 must design a communication plan that addresses the needs of
front-line employees, supervisors and executives. Each audience has particular needs for
information based on their role in the implementation of the change.
As a starting point, the following communication checklist taken from the Change
Management Toolkit (Prosci)1 provides a summary of the most important communication topics
for managing change.
Part 1 - Messages about the business today (shared during the earliest stages of the
change)
• The current situation and the rationale for the change
• The business issues or drivers that created a need for change
• Competitive issues or changes in the marketplace including customer issues
• Financial issues or trends
• What might happen if a change is not made (the risk of not making the change)
Part 2 - Messages about the change (shared after employees understand the business
situation and business reasons for change)
Chapter 5
p83
Throughout this book, the term change management has been used in relation
to managing change with one or more business initiatives. But what happens when change
becomes the norm? Current economic conditions have placed a premium on an
organization’s ability to be flexible, quick to market, scalable and responsive to
unique customer demands.
An organization that faces constant demands to
change and uses effective change management over and over with each new initiative may
experience a fundamental shift in its operations and the behavior of its employees.
Sponsors begin to repeat activities that made the last change successful. Managers develop
skills to support employees through the change. Employees see part of their job as
navigating these new changes. Each level in the organization will have internalized its
role in change and developed the skills and knowledge necessary to react to constant
change. The organization has become ready and able to embrace change; it has developed
change competency.
Chapter 6
Change Management: the People Side of Change presents the foundation
needed to effectively manage change.
The book began by creating Awareness of the need for change management and
Desire to use change management techniques to avoid project failures or business
disruptions. Change management is used for one reason – to ensure business success.
Many changes do fail in organizations that do not appreciate and manage the people side of
change. We presented research results that showed change management as the most critical
and important activity for business improvement projects. We discussed the many forms of
employee and management resistance and showed how this resistance can severely impair or
stop a change project. Project teams that introduce change but do not use change
management run the risk of missed project objectives, productivity losses, and sometimes
complete failure.
One of your key responsibilities as a change agent it to be the champion
of change management in your organization. You must demonstrate the importance of actively
managing change and build support within your peers, leaders and reports. You must provide
guidance to senior executives and managers and supervisors. You must help the organization
embrace and thrive during change.
Resources are provided in the Appendices to help you...
For a limited time, receive a free copy of this book with any Change Management
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