Change management through staff engagement 

How do you lead change, and make it stick? From emerging technologies, growth, merger and acquisitions, risk and compliance, efficiency to people and talent; changes to the organisation can be afoot, requiring key stakeholder engagement across corporate functions such as HR, finance, legal, IT, procurement but most importantly – to people. Change at its core impacts people and people drive your business – they’re the heart. 

McKinsey will tell you that only 30% of transformations are successful, with most transformational change experiencing overspend and delays, often measured in years. So how do you get change right and make it land properly?

From Kotter’s to ADKAR, there are several models providing frameworks developed to support businesses manage change while increasing successful adoption. 

ADKAR was developed by Jeffrey Hiatt in the 1990s. He recognised that existing change management frameworks were focused on organisational change management around process, tech and structure but didn’t support people and their role in the change. His goal was to develop a model to help businesses understand people change. 

In order to develop a roadmap toward change there are five steps:

·       awareness (the need)

·       desire (to support and participate in)

·       knowledge (how)

·       ability (to change)

·       reinforcement (to sustain).

Each step should be covered by every individual to embrace and implement change successfully. 

Awareness

Create an understanding of the need for change and the ‘why’. Awareness is the foundation for the change initiative and needs to land therefore being critical to getting people onboard. 

How? Communication, training, town halls, top-down messages, posters, sounding boards, change champions.

Desire

Create a motivation to support the change. This is essential to ensuring that individuals are committed to and invested in the time and effort in making the change successful. 

How? Highlight the benefits of the change and how it will improve the business and the individual’s role, consider setting objectives around the change and link to financial performance.

Knowledge

Provide people with the information and skills they need to successfully make the change. 

How? Training, coaching, mentoring.

Ability

Issue resources and support to be able to implement change. 

How? Technology, process, tools, support, feedback.

Reinforcement

Recognise and reward individuals for their efforts and successes in implementing the change. This ensures people are motivated to continue to support the change and are recognised for contributions. 

How? Recognition programmes, incentives, ongoing feedback.

The ADKAR model focuses on people as individuals alongside a structured step by step approach, ensuring people are not overlooked. Coupled with it being easy to apply it to a diverse range of change initiatives; ADKAR offers a flexible approach. However; this can be time consuming and require a lot of monitoring and resource – of which not all businesses are able to offer. A hybrid approach to individual and organisational change will always ensure a balanced and qualitive change delivery. 

The ADKAR model can be assigned to many key critical business functions around Organisation change, project management and personal development. 

Change management is the new normal. In our industry and business in general, lies a steady stream of constant change and disruption keeping us on our toes. Whether it’s a tech / integration change or legislation update requiring a new process, training and tech advancement, teams need to be aware and adapt consistently. 

While we can apply structure through the multiple change models available to us, the key component of leading change is just that: leadership. Leaders need to guide their people through the rocky waters of change starting with the below.

Empathy

Acknowledge and take the time to understand the emotions of others. There is no you and them, you’re in it together and listening to people builds trust and buy-in. 

What and why

Just like strategy, direction is key – people need to know where they’re going – and why. What’s the opportunity and why are you solving any problem? Explain the timeline, the responsibilities, assumptions and dependencies and don’t cut knowledge short – when you provide clear communication and direction, people will feel comfortable in understanding the impact to them.

Change champions

Communication and transparency are critical leadership pillars. Prosci advises us that businesses with strong change communication are three times more likely to succeed. Per the ADKAR and Kotter models, use different channels to cascade communications – town halls, intranet’s, FAQs, it’s not a one off – it needs to be a consistent approach. Inspire people to consider the change and why they should make it. 

Empower

Micromanagement is always going to be a recipe for disaster. Delegate and upskill your team and hand them opportunities through delegation. If your team has the tools and trust to get on, they will foster a sense of responsibility and therefore ownership and engagement. 

Celebrate wins

Like any change, nothing is always plain sailing. Ride the highs to balance the lows – celebrate the wins and have your teams back – always. Recognition fosters positivity and engagement – and if something goes wrong, work through lessons learnt and future mitigations together – teams who win and fail together, learn, grow stronger and go far. 

Lead by example

People follow by example – be positive, transparent, build relationships and trust and embrace change. Be visible. 

Think of it this way; the opposite of change is a concept people loathe more: “I hate working on old systems – I am not growing or learning anything. These processes are manual, inefficient and take too much wasted time”. In the dynamic world we find ourselves in, people want change like they want knowledge – it’s about growth and satisfying work and accomplishment. 

We may all battle the fear of the unknown but at the heart of every successful change journey lies understanding – and empathy. Take the time to listen always and share experiences. Change journeys are a tapestry of perspectives:

·       sponsors emanate their hopes and fears

·       leaders paint their vision

·       users whisper their worries.

With each voice build a stakeholder map and a change impact analysis across key change areas (tech, process, people, data, controls, service) and be open to those who resist – there’s always an important voice behind how to be better prepared to get people onboard.