For many organisations, developing organisational change management capability and capacity can be a 5 to 10 year journey. It demands effort, investment, goal setting and planning. As expert change management practitioners, CMC regularly interact with organisations who are excited by the idea of building change capabilities but soon discover that they do not yet have the infrastructure in place to make it happen.
From our experience of working alongside these organisations, we have created a list of the top 4 tips to develop enterprise level change capability that will start to increase the agility and the responsiveness of your organisation. Applying these to your organisation will increase the likelihood of organisational change success. For some organisations, our support results in a complete transformation in why and how the entire organisation thinks, reacts to and handles change.
1. The Adoption of a Proven Change Management Methodology
Following a disciplined, structured and straight forward approach to change deployment helps to build change management capabilities into the foundations of an enterprise through a consistent approach. An increasing number of organisations are now turning to a proven methodology that puts emphasis on building management’s change knowledge and improving the change infrastructure and processes in place.
It should be noted at this point that best practices research show that one methodology should be selected, customised and implemented across the entire organisation. It may be tempting to practice more than one methodology to address multiple change aspects, but this can end up hindering you in the long-term. Different methodologies will have their own techniques to tackle organisational change which may be conflicting and therefore can lead to confusion. This can make coordinating change activities and monitoring change progress far more complicated than it actually needs to be. So why give change leaders more work than necessary?
The Prosci ADKAR model is a commonly favoured change management methodology due to its ease of use. When selecting the best approach to build your organisation’s change capabilities, it is essential that you consider how the model will be accepted and used across the entire organisation.
Download: 6 Tactics for Growing Enterprise Change Capability
2. Capture Sponsorship for Change
Your Leaders have the ability to set the tone of how change is managed, promoted and perceived throughout the organisation. You probably already know that a lack of acceptance and interest in building enterprise level change capabilities, particularly from the Leadership, has been reported as one of the core catalysts of unsuccessful organisational change. Your leaders are best placed to set the overall vision and direction and to communicate directly to employees about why developing change capabilities is important. Their promotion of the value of enterprise change management can ultimately determine how change is implemented into an organisation’s operations and culture.
The organisation should assist the Leader, or Sponsor, with materials, plans, and activities to encourage and drive enterprise change capabilities. Providing hands-on and visible support to sponsors will give them a clear understanding of what their role and responsibilities are, and ultimately help to provide them with the necessary skills and capabilities to facilitate change throughout the organisation.
3. Integrate Change Management with Project Management
To deploy effective enterprise change management, it should be treated as a project. Projects involve structure and a set of planned actions that are monitored by management and delivered by their team. Having a set list of initial objectives that you want to achieve will make it easier to monitor progress and evaluate how your organisation’s change capabilities have developed over time. Building a dedicated team consisting of individuals from different business functions and levels within the organisation will definitely help to improve change capabilities.
We recommend that you treat the development of enterprise change like a project.
4. Utilising a Holistic Approach
Organisations who are serious about building change management capabilities recognise that to do so goes beyond simply providing training to their employees. It takes a community, and involves establishing skills and tactics across multiple areas including leadership, projects, skills, structures and process. It is not sufficient to just consider one or two of these areas. All should be considered and action plans developed in order to develop change capabilities. Ensuring your organisation is prepared with well thought out approaches that are sustainable, effective and accepted throughout the organisation is key.
Through following these 4 tips, you can start to embark on change management practices that should become the norm within your organisation.
Find out more
If you'd like to learn more about enterprise change management, take a look at what free resources we have available. Also, explore our selection of FREE Prosci on-demand webinars.
If growing your organisation's change management capability is high on your agenda, you may be interested in attending an Enterprise Change Management Boot Camp. Find out more.
You may also be interested in speaking to us about our range of solutions which we offer privately for organisations. If your organisation is serious about increasing organisational change capability, speak to us today!
