Change Management

The design and implementation of organizational change are separate stages, but they are best understood as one continuous process, broken out into three streams: the communica­tion side, the training side and the incentives side.

1. Communication. Effective communication is a lot more than just giving people updates every month or every week. It’s really a marketing strategy. People are naturally resistant to change, and you’ve got to sell them on the benefits of it.

   To communicate the need for change, borrow from traditional marketing concepts. Analyze your organization by seg­ments, and develop the key messages specifically for each segment. The segments could be individuals, like the CEO, or groups of people, like all project managers. In any case, a key to understanding the stakeholder is to understand their pain points. Addressing these pain points should be a common thread through your communications.

   Develop a strategy around the best medium for reaching everyone - newslet­ters, email, workshops, brown-bag lunches, etc. - and how often people will need to be reached. To reach larger audiences, consider setting up monthly presentations to provide statuses on a regular basis and to establish a forum for questions and answers. No matter which media you choose, a key to success is regularity. Be sure to establish a schedule that you can keep.

    

   For those people who are on the front lines, provide them with talking points on a weekly basis. This will allow them to provide consistent messaging and to speak with one voice.

    

   As you implement your strategy, be aware that communicating is a two-way street. Once your information goes out, it becomes just as important to collect, analyze and synthesize what comes back. Interviewing people, encouraging feedback through email and other means - these must be a part of your rollout. Use the continual analysis of feedback to proactively identify issues so that mitigation steps can be undertaken before the issue snowballs out of control.

    

2. Training. Training is critical to giving people the new skills they will require; it involves a lot more than just enrolling your people in a few training classes on the new software package. You’ve got to design the requirements of the training plan around the specific skills your employees will need and how quickly they can learn them. Take care in determining the best medium of instruction - is it in a traditional classroom setting with trainers and trainees face to face? Learning from a manual or computer tutorial? Through a “Webinar,” or virtual seminar, developed by a trainer, recorded onto a file, and made available through your organization’s Intranet?

    

   Or are your needs less complicated? If all you require is a low-level program for a simple change in a process, you might be able to deliver the training through one group presentation or even send it out by email.

    

   For any complex program, pilot training is crucial. You don’t want to run a costly and time-consuming training program on a large scale and get nothing out of it. Test-run your program on a carefully selected trial group. Be on the lookout for problems, and do a “before and after” assessment of your test subjects’ skills.

   No matter how complex the training program, make sure that your people know who to contact if they have questions after the training has concluded. This might be a designated go-to person in your department or the company help desk. For more complex programs, you might want to consider more structured post training support, for example having hands-on trainers walk the floor to assist people with their questions.

3. Incentives. Employees need incentives for changing their work patterns, but designing the most appropriate incentives can be tricky and is highly dependent upon your organization’s culture. Incentives can be of the “carrot” or “stick” variety. “Sticks” do not need to be that painful but can be very effective. For example, if taking a training class is part of the required change, present a list of people who have and have not attended training during a company meeting. The public “dis-recognition” can be just enough to get people to act.

    

   Better, though, are “carrots” - positive incentives. What do your employees value, and how can that guide you in designing incentives? Make the incentives commensurate with the nature and scope of the changes people are asked to make: the bigger and more difficult the changes, the greater the incentives.

    

   Incentives can be monetary, but there are other ways of rewarding employees as well. Bonuses, after all, can be hard to manage. If you are trying to get your people to utilize a knowledge management (KM) system, for example, the best type of incentive may be to shine the light of recognition on those who make the most useful contributions to the database. Or perhaps the best incentive is to offer opportunities for people to develop their skills and advance their careers, or allow them to choose how they want to be involved in specific future projects.

    

   Along these lines, try tying the incentive to a certification process. For instance, if you are rolling out a new project management application, look into having the training classes apply toward PMI certification. This not only provides them with additional incentive, but also clearly ties the change to their career development goals.