Leading Water Utilities Company Builds the Capacity for Absorbing Changes

Step 1: Discussing and Establishing the Objectives

Having worked with the client for a few years, we discussed in detail what the concept of change management might look like for their organisation. It became clear that there was a need to build capacity for employees to absorb change more effectively, understanding that thousands of customers may eventually be impacted by these changes. 

Step 2: Practitioner Training for Individuals

Consequently, a few individuals from within the organisation enrolled on a Prosci® Change Management Practitioner Certification Programme. Prosci understands change as a three-phase process, and on the course we trained and coached the individuals in the necessary skills to execute each stage, as they applied Prosci tools to their respective change initiatives.

Step 3: Closed Group Courses for the Client and Partners

With the few individuals having experienced the success of this course first-hand, our client entrusted us with Certification training exclusively for teams from their organisation. These closed-group courses enabled the client teams to focus solely on their organisation’s change projects during the training, and also the opportunity to involve some of their senior leaders.

While the organisation had chosen to develop a small team of change specialists centrally, they also trained others across departments thereby employing a dispersed model of change practitioners throughout the organisation. In this way, key roles – from those in the project delivery teams, operations, events and IT through to HR – are equipped to manage change effectively, contributing to the organisation’s Change Management capability as a whole.

A change network was built. With individuals from some partner organisations also participating in the training, a common approach to change management was able to filtrate across the network of partners: an important step for our client, who relies on the expertise of these partners to help them support and deliver their services. Developing a common approach and ‘language’ for change has strengthened their collective Change Management capabilities through their growing change community.

A common approach to Change Management enabled them to filtrate across the network of partners... an important step for our client.

Step 4: The Enterprise Change Management Bootcamp

Within its smaller team of change specialists, our client enrolled several of their lead team on our Prosci Enterprise Change Management Boot Camp – a workshop tailored specifically to plan and develop a plan to build organisational change as a core competency enterprise-wide. In this workshop the client was able to understand how change management manifests within their business from a ‘bigger picture’ perspective. 

The Prosci Change Management Maturity Audit (CMMA) tool enabled them to assess the maturity of Change Management within their organisation in the present so that they were able to develop plans and a roadmap of activity as to how mature they aim to be in one, two, five or ten years.

The Results

Our client was able to start to assess change management capability within their organisation and develop their own plans – such as learning how to build change management into roles at all levels, into their projects and their company vocabulary. The Enterprise Change Management (ECM) approach has enabled them to really understand change management capability as journey requiring long-term investment which positively impacts the organisation and helps to support successful delivery of their business strategy and performance.

With over 30 certified Change Management practitioners throughout the organisation so far, this structured approach to understanding and implementing change management has already increased their ability to deliver effective change.