Managing change within an organisation and having the capability to successfully transform an enterprise are often considered two separate skill sets. You may recognise the value of change management, there may be a group of you who have completed a training course and you may be using change management tools on some projects - but have you considered the necessary steps required to ensure your entire organisation internalises the ability to deliver both more change and can increase the business performance it delivers from every change initiative or project? This scale of enterprise transformation goes beyond traditional change management; there is a need to reinvent the organisation through building core change competencies and establishing new employee behaviours and attitudes towards change. The following are key aspects that you need to continually monitor and assess which will aid this internalisation and transformation process.
1. Continued support from leadership
Prosci’s research highlights that active and visible support from executives and leadership plays a significant role in the success of building an organisation’s change capabilities. Keeping this in mind, it is imperative that their support is continually sought and delivered. Fundamentally, they are strong change catalysts that have proven their influence time and time again. They need to consistently voice their support, promote the change and also recruit peers and influential line managers to the cause.
Without their sponsorship, they could become one of the most dangerous obstacles when managing the people side of change due to the level of power they exert within the organisation. To ensure that leadership are on-board, you must have the skills to build a solid business case for change management and be able to adapt your presentations to talk the language that executive sponsors understand i.e. results, numbers and money. Leaders must be able to appreciate why your change activities matter, how they will directly benefit the organisation and understand fully what their expected role is.
2. Capture broader support across the organisation
Although capturing leadership and senior executive support and buy-in is essential during an enterprise transformation, you must also be considering the other groups of individuals whom you also require support from, such as project managers and influential middle managers. To identify these individuals, you must first be able to identify the purpose of the change and what specific functions within the organisation will be impacted, and how they will be specifically impacted by this change.
Once those directly affected by the change initiative are highlighted, you must work to position the value of the change as early as possible to give them enough time to generate favourable opinions towards it. Those affected by the change should advise you of which approach to take when trying to capture their support. To ensure the successful future of change management in your organisation, employee resistance must also be considered at this stage. Resistance is natural so lets not wait for it to occur, instead anticipate it and put actions in place to mitigate it. It is crucial to listen to the concerns of resistant employees and especially line managers and implement their valuable input into your change strategies going forward; allowing them to feel more involved and part of the upcoming changes.
3. Always customise your approach
No two changes are the same and therefore the change management strategy you deploy to support your enterprise transformation must be customised. As previously mentioned, you must learn to customise your approach when seeking change sponsorship from executives and leadership, but you will also learn that for future initiatives to work, you must consider customising many aspects of the change programme. Although, a structured approach that is initiated as early as possible is recognised as one of the top contributors towards project success, you still must expect that this approach will evolve in future and so any change management strategy must be flexibly applied throughout the lifecycle of the change.
Change management training courses will teach you the core underlying concepts and frameworks behind the discipline such as the Prosci ADKAR model and the Prosci 3-Phase Process, but it then requires the change sponsor and directly impacted line managers to apply this discipline, under the guidance of the change management practitioner team, when introducing the change to directly impacted employees. These easy to use models act as a framework to help guide the overall change management process.
At CMC, we recognise that delivering successful enterprise transformations is challenging. We have helped numerous organisations carry out their change initiatives and develop their change management capabilities. Take a look at our various different public, open enrolment change management Training programs and 1-day Workshops below if you believe that your organisation could benefit from change management training. Many of these programs are also run privately for organisations requiring a group of individuals to be trained anywhere in the world. Please contact us separately if interested in private change management training for your team. Click here, or below to view all our courses. 
