Scientific Leader Develops a Dialogue-Based, Collaborative Introduction of Change

Step 1: Discussing and Establishing the Objectives

When a single employee from this organization attended the Prosci® Change Management Practitioner Programme, run by Prosci Europe she gained knowledge and skills that enabled her to become an internal advocate with the senior leadership of her organisation. Having secured their support, she came back to us for advice on how best to proceed. 

Step 2: Reviewing, Prioritising and Structuring Objectives

Our client understood that if you focus on change management without clarity on what you seek to change, you are unlikely to make progress: we were able to response flexibly to this initial  need with bespoke workshop, enabling the leadership team to review, prioritise and structure their programme of change. This was a critical prerequisite for subsequent change management development work.

Step 3: Gaining Strategic Alignment, Sponsorship and Ownership

Having established priority and structure, the senior team were instrumental in conceiving and developing a plan through which change management capability was to be built. They achieved this in a Prosci Strategic Alignment Workshop which resulted in both ownership and commitment across the whole leadership team, with the senior support needed for successful delivery across the organisation. 

This was followed by the senior leadership team attending our Prosci Sponsor Briefing Workshop, which helped Senior Leaders leadership understand their role in active and visible leadership of the change initiatives they launch. 

Having a proactive internal advocate for change management within the organisation made a huge difference – supporting key individuals as advocates has been very effective.

Step 4: Executing the Change With Middle Management

We then held a Prosci Leading your Team through Change Workshop, which educated those who would be responsible for delivering change, and also those impacted by the change taking place. 

Step 5: Supporting the Internal Advocate

We supported our internal advocate in ensuring change management practitioner capacity was made available to support both senior leaders and middle managers in doing the right things to lead on change successfully.

Step 6: Implementation of Change Management to a Flagship Project

A final element of the plan that served as the key to success was the application of change management to a flagship enterprise resource planning project Driven internally, this project was sponsored by the finance director, who with internal change management support did a great job in fulfilling their change sponsorship role. With senior leadership role-modelling active change sponsorship, other colleagues saw at first hand the successes achieved, seeking to emulate the change management approach within their own teams.

  The Results

What started with a single employee approaching us to upskill themselves in change management has become a long-term collaboration – resulting in broad development of change management capability within their organisation – and significantly improved results from change.

Our work with this client has reinforced our conviction of the importance of internal advocacy and sponsorship in developing change management capability. While the development of change management is ongoing, results from investing in change management are already very evident: not only has the organisation encountered less resistance to the change initiatives they are deploying, they are experiencing a more dialogue-based, collaborative introduction of change, with employee satisfaction improving as a result.