Welcome to the Change Management Tutorial Series

Home   |   Bookstore   |    Tutorials   |   Benchmarking

Email this page to a friend

2003 Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking report now available - order information

Email this page to a friend

The following tutorial is based on findings from the 2003 Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking study. This is Prosci's third study in the past six years that investigates best practices in change management. 288 organizations from 51 countries participated in this study. The full report is now available. More information on the report is available online.

Key executive activities

Participants in this benchmarking study recommended five areas more than any other as the key roles and contributions from top-management sponsors.  These actions were:

1. Take the lead in establishing a budget and assigning the right resources for the project including:
   
   

   • set priorities between project work and day-to-day work

   • be an advocate for assigning the best resources to the team

   • provide the necessary funding and budget for the project

   • appoint an experienced change agent to support the project (experienced in change management)

2. Be active with the project team throughout the project:
   
   

   • help define the program and the scope

   • attend key meetings

   • set deadlines and expectations

   • ask to see deliverables

   • make yourself available to the team members

   • expect results and hold the team accountable

3. Engage and create support with other senior managers:
   
   

   • represent the project to your peers

   • educate key stakeholders

   • communicate the need for change and sell the process to other business leaders

   • hold mid-level managers accountable

   • form and lead a steering committee of key stakeholders

   • combat resistance from other senior managers

4. Be an active and visible spokesperson for the change:
   
   

   • communicate the need for the change to employees

   • share the financial implications and risk of not changing

   • articulate the vision and goals

   • be a champion of the change throughout implementation (stay visible)

   • connect the change to the business strategy

5. Help manage key resistance points:
   
   

   • help the team understand the political landscape and hot spots

   • use authority when necessary

   • clearly set expectations for employees and mid-level managers

Most common mistakes made by executive sponsors

Participants cited the following areas as the most common mistakes made by executive sponsors:

• Not visibly supporting the change throughout the entire process (becoming disconnected from the change)

• Abdicating responsibility or delegating down - “setting it up and leaving it to the project manager”

• Not communicating the reason and need for change and the future state (the vision) to employees and managers multiple times through multiple media

• Failing to build a coalition of business leaders and stakeholders to support the project

• Moving on to the next change before the current change is in place or changing priorities too soon after the project has started

• Underestimating resistance to change and the need to manage the people-side of the change process (unwilling to deal with resistant managers or stay the course when resistance increases)

• Failing to set expectations with mid-level mangers and front-line supervisors related to the change and change process

• Spending too little time on the project to keep it on track and with the project team to help them overcome obstacles

Executive responsibilities and activity map

Participants were asked to indicate the most important executive activities during three phases of a change project: start-up (planning), design and implementation.

Upon analysis of the data, three main groups emerged that the sponsor must interact with:

1. Project team
2. Stakeholders and peers (executive and senior management)
3. Employees

The figure below (see Figure B) is a 3 x 3 diagram illustrating the responsibilities of the sponsor in each project phase (start-up, design and implementation). The activities required for each box in this figure are described in detail in the complete report.    The behaviors and steps presented in these figures represent a high-level description of how the sponsor should act to best support the project during that particular phase, based on an analysis of the participant data.

Figure B - Sponsor responsibilities

Note: The labels for each box in Figure B are intended to be general descriptions for the category and are not intended to stand-alone from the activity lists presented in the full report.

The tutorial above comes for the 2003 edition of Best Practices in Change Management.  Visit the report's website to find out more about the report.  You can order the report online, or call 970-203-9332 for more information.

Email this page to a friend

Related Resources:

Change Management Toolkit: