ADKAR: Awareness and Desire - the first two steps to success
An overview of Prosci's ADKAR Model

Awareness is the first building block of Prosci's ADKAR Model. Any successful change begins with the answer to one of the most basic questions about change: Why? It is human nature to want to understand the reasoning behind an action or a required change. The first building block of ADKAR, Awareness, represents this thirst for understanding why.

Before looking at the contributing and resisting factors, there is an important but subtle nuance on how Awareness is defined in the model. In Prosci's ADKAR Model, the first building block is defined as "Awareness of the need for change" - and not simply "Awareness that a change is happening". This may seem trivial at first, but it is an important distinction and is not merely semantics. Building Awareness as defined within ADKAR means sharing both the nature of the change AND answering why this change is needed. It means clearly explaining the business drivers or opportunities that have resulted in the need for change. It also means addressing why a change is needed now, and explaining the risk of not changing. Remember, we have only succeeded at building Awareness when an employee would say to us, "I understand the nature of the change and why this change is needed" - this is the power and essence of an individual change management model.

However, building Awareness can be much more difficult than it sounds. For example, when you hear a proposed change, do you trust the "sender" of the change message? Do you believe the reasons they are providing about why the change is needed. Even in our everyday life, we encounter many ideas for change in which we do not agree with the messages being provided to us.

As a change manager, you will need to understand the activities that drive Awareness, and at the same time, take into account those "resisting factors" or restraining forces that prevent the awareness message from taking hold with your audiences. In some cases the resisting factors are so strong, that even the best communications plan will be insufficient. Effective change management plans are designed to surface and deal with these resisting factors.

Desire

Desire is the second building block of Prosci's ADKAR Model. Once an individual has an understanding of why a change is needed (Awareness), the next step in successful change is making a personal decision to support and participate in the change. Many practitioners say that Desire is the most difficult of the five building blocks to achieve. Desire is difficult because it is ultimately a personal decision that is not under our direct control. While there are certainly ways to try and influence a person's decision to get "on board" with a change, in the end individuals must make this decision themselves. As with Awareness, Desire is only achieved when the individual would say to us, "I'm in - I will be part of this change".

What can you do to facilitate Desire? The table below summarizes some of the contributing and resisting factors for creating Desire.

Implications for change management professionals

Below are some tips and reflections about Awareness and Desire that can help change management professionals be more effective in implementing change.

• True Awareness can easily be overlooked. In fact, you can expect that key messages about why a change is needed will be overlooked by senior leaders and project teams. This is not their fault, in fact, it makes complete sense when you think about what these two groups are concerned with - what keeps them up at night. Senior leaders care about financial performance and strategic direction. They spend their time looking into the future and putting in motion changes to reach their vision for the organization. So, their natural tendency is to talk about the future and their vision. Project teams are charged with designing an effective solution for a problem or opportunity facing the organization. They spend their time evaluating alternatives and developing a new tool/process/approach for the business. So, their natural tendency is to talk about their solution and the transition that will be required. It makes sense that these groups focus on the future (for senior leaders) and the transition (for project teams). Both of these groups have also had time to evaluate and internalize why the way things are done today needs to be changed. However, employees who will be impacted by a change are concerned with what they are doing each and every day, and why a change is required right now. There is a fundamental and understandable disconnect here - and as a result Awareness of the need for change can often be overlooked.

• It is easy to jump straight to Knowledge. Some change management practitioners, and especially those who are new to change management, will quickly jump to training as a way to encourage individual change. Rather than investing the time and energy in campaigns to build Awareness and Desire, they will immediately put employees in training about the new process or tool that will be deployed. The result is easy to predict - employees show up for training but sit with their arms crossed wondering why they are sitting through yet another training program. Without the prerequisite Awareness and Desire, efforts to build Knowledge will not be successful and can actually create more resistance.

• Lack of awareness has been cited as the number one reason for employee resistance in Prosci's last three benchmarking studies (2009, 2007, 2005). Study participants continue to report that employees were not opposed to the solution or to the new way of doing work, but rather they resisted change because no one made a clear and compelling case for why the change was needed in the first place. By overlooking or ignoring Awareness, projects faced much more resistance which ultimately can slow down progress and reduce Return on Investment. And, dealing with resistance after it has emerged is much less effective than investing the time and energy to build Awareness early in a project.

• Creating Awareness when "times are good" can be difficult, but it is still essential. When an organization is in trouble, and it is readily visible to employees, building Awareness of the need for change is easy - in fact many employees will likely have already acknowledged that something is broken and needs to be changed. However, building Awareness when an organization is succeeding is often a more difficult proposition. The old adage of "If it isn't broken, then why fix it" comes in to play. Change management professionals will have to work harder to create a compelling case of change so that the reasons are blatantly evident.

• More and more and more Awareness does not result in Desire. It is important to recognize when employees have moved through the Awareness phase and are now at Desire. Continuing to focus on the reasons for change and not translating those reasons into the personal and organizational motivating factors is a trap some change management practitioners face - and it can be very discouraging and annoying for employees. Be sure to think about and understand the difference between Awareness and Desire and what messages are important in each of these building blocks. While communications can building Awareness, more communication does not result in those personal decisions to support and engage in the change. Your change management plans will require artful use of key business leaders as sponsors of change, and of managers and supervisors as "coaches" to employees during the change process.

• Awareness and Desire can ebb and flow. Sometimes, change management professionals will conclude that once they have created Awareness and Desire, they no longer need to reinforce these elements. They quickly move on to training to help build Knowledge and Ability. However, in reality, Awareness and Desire can go away as quickly as they were created. It requires reinforcement and continued communication to maintain the levels of Awareness and Desire necessary to make changes successful. Remember that employees are always paying attention to the somewhat "shifting sands" of change that surrounds them. Change saturation sets in, and the result can be backward movement on other changes.

Coming up: the rest of this series will look at each of the five ADKAR building blocks in more detail and examine application of Prosci's ADKAR Model in terms of organizational change.

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