Which of the following is the first strategy to apply when employees dont feel urgency for change?

Managing organizational change is complicated. Leaders must align people to the reason for the change, often working against long-standing habits and beliefs. Organizations are more likely to succeed when they plan change initiatives proactively and engage employees before, during and after the change. Below are the seven ways leaders can effectively manage change in their organizations.

1. Put people first

Successful change management prioritizes people. People fuel change and sustain its momentum. Change initiatives fail when the people involved don’t understand, believe in or engage in the change.

Leaders make change easier when they engage employees in the change. Leaders accomplish this through proactive change management communication that creates a desire to change across the workforce.

This aligns with the Prosci change methodology, Beehive’s change model of choice. Prosci’s methodology is based on more than 20 years of research, with 45,000 people trained and certified globally, making it a strong option for global businesses.

Change initiatives will fail if people don’t believe in the change and aren’t mobilized by others to act.

2. Work with a change management model

Leaders are up against company culture, organizational momentum and human psychology when enacting change. To make change happen, they need the right tools to guide them. Change management models help leaders connect business strategy to action, which increases the likelihood of success.

There are a variety of change management models from which to choose (e.g., Prosci’s ADKAR model, Lewin’s Change Management Model, Kotter’s Change Management Model). Each model varies, but all follow similar core tenants of identifying needs and planning for and implementing change. Prosci’s methodology is Beehive’s change management model of choice because it: 1) blends the psychology of individual change with organizational change, 2) is globally backed with more than 20 years of research and 3) clearly addresses the role of communication in change.

Download your own change management communication plan now.

3. Empower employees through communication

Communication is an essential part of effectively managing organizational change. A vision for change is only as powerful as the communication that supports it. Effective change management communication provides clarity for why the change is needed and mobilizes employees with a sense of urgency for the change. Companies fail to drive meaningful change when they fail to communicate.

Change management communication isn’t a one-time transfer of information. It requires commitment, clarity and consistency. It should engage employees through two-way communication methods like surveys, focus groups and informal feedback collection. When leadership involves employees, they feel valued. When employees feel valued, they are more likely to embrace change and participate in making it happen.

Two-way communication also helps leaders identify barriers to change before they become a problem. Proactively identifying barriers can enable the organization to respond to and dissolve issues that create change resistance.

4. Activate leadership

A recent Prosci survey cited “active and visible executive sponsorship” as the top reason change initiatives succeed. Leadership’s impact on change is well-understood. The problem is that many leaders don’t understand the vital role they play in change. Educate leaders on their roles, and you’ll enable them to advance change successfully.

Leaders:

• are responsible for achieving change goals from start to finish.
• help the organization understand and interpret what the change means for their teams, the organization and the marketplace.
• ensure those who enable organizational change stay actively involved.
• keep the train on the tracks and are ready to switch directions, choose a new path or create a new approach if necessary.

Read more about motivating your leadership team to embrace change here. 

5. Make change compelling and exciting

Employees can better understand the rationale behind a change when organizations prioritize purposeful, clear and consistent communication. This targeted communication strategy provides the context to understand the why, what and so what of the change. Effective communication answers the most important question people are thinking: What does this mean to me; how will it impact my work? With a deeper, clearer understanding of the change, employees are much more likely to ask, “How can I help?”

The shift from rote compliance to true engagement and belief is powerful. Strong employee support deters change resistance that could hold the organization back.

6. Pay attention to high and low points in momentum

There will be both high and low points during change initiatives. Leaders can proactively manage and leverage these points in time. During the high points of change, leaders should celebrate wins to fuel momentum. At the low points, leaders can reset communication strategies to listen to employee input and build trust and support. Being proactive helps leaders manage momentum for the greatest success.

7. Don’t ignore resistance

Change resistance is poisonous to an organization’s transformation. Resistance is much easier to counter when it’s identified early. Leaders should pay attention to the signs of change resistance, including inaction, procrastination, withholding information and the spread of rumors. Communication is the key to identifying resistance. Create feedback loops with employees, like surveys, feedback channels and input sessions to proactively identify signs of resistance, then take fast action.

Change is the lifeblood of successful, growing organizations, and the heart of change is people. Leaders position themselves and their companies for managing organizational change effectively when they proactively engage employees and ensure communication is clear, consistent and transparent.

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About Lisa Hannum, President & CEO

Lisa Hannum is founder and CEO of Beehive Strategic Communication, a Certified B Corporation. She is a purpose-driven leader who believes in the power of communication to build better businesses for a better world. Lisa has more than 30 years of experience in brand positioning, change management, culture transformation, crisis and issues management, marketing and public relations. Her clients have included Verizon, 3M, Cargill, University of Minnesota Health and Beaumont Health. Lisa frequently speaks and writes on the business value of communication and workplace culture.

Although it is sometimes called the soft side of change, managing the people side of a change is often the most challenging and critical component of an organizational transformation.

Consider a merger or acquisition. The technical side of the change is certainly complex. You must work out the financial arrangements of the deal, integrate business systems, make decisions about the new organization's structure, and more. But getting people on board and participating in the merger or acquisition can make the difference between success and failure.

Why? Individuals will need to perform their jobs differently. The degree to which they change their behaviors and adopt new processes has a significant impact on the initiative. This is why the soft side of change can be the harder side of change. Fortunately, you can apply a structured approach to managing the people side of change and make a big impact on overall success.

Change Management Starter Bundle: Start applying change management
to your projects and initiatives today with free resources from Prosci. 

The People Side of Change

Change management addresses the people side of change. Creating a new organization, designing new work processes, and implementing new technologies may never see their full potential if you don't bring your people along. That's because financial success depends on how thoroughly individuals in the organization embrace the change.

Change management is the application of a structured process and set of tools for leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome. Ultimately, change management focuses on how to help people engage, adopt and use a change in their day-to-day work.

When defining change management, we recognize it as both a process and a competency. 

Change Management as a Process

The change management process enables practitioners within organizations to leverage and scale the change management activities that help impacted individuals and groups move through their transitions. The Prosci Methodology includes a robust, research-based process called the Prosci 3-Phase Process:

During Phase 1 – Prepare Approach, we ask and answer:

• What are we trying to achieve?
• Who has to do their jobs differently and how?
• What will it take to achieve success?

During Phase 2 – Manage Change, we ask and answer:

• What will we do to prepare, support and engage people?
• How are we doing?
• What adjustments do we need to make?

And during Phase 3 – Sustain Outcomes, we ask and answer:

• Now, where are we? Are we done yet?
• What is needed to ensure the change sticks?
• Who will assume ownership and sustain outcomes?

Change Management as a Competency 

At the organizational level, change management is a leadership competency for enabling change within an organization. It is also a strategic capability designed to increase the change capacity and responsiveness of the organization. 

For senior leaders, change management competency means being able to lead change for the organization, including being an effective sponsor of change and demonstrating commitment to the change, both individually and organizationally. For people managers working with front-line employees, competency relates to effectively coaching direct reports through their change journeys. Although competency varies according your relationship to change, organizations are more effective and successful when they build change management competencies throughout their ranks.

Change management is not just communication and training. Nor is it simply managing resistance. Effective change management follows a structured process and employs a holistic set of tools to drive successful individual and organizational change.

Why Do We Need Change Management?

There are numerous reasons to employ effective change management on both large- and small-scale efforts. Here are three main reasons:

Organizational change happens one person at a time

It is easy to think about change only from an organizational perspective. When you consider a merger or acquisition, you might focus on financial structuring, data and systems integration, and physical location changes. However, organizational change of any kind occurs one person at a time. That is because an organization-wide change only occurs when Andre, Becky, Carlos and Dharma do their jobs differently.

Organizations don’t change, people do. It is the cumulative impact of successful individual change that brings about successful organizational change. If individuals don’t make changes to their day-to-day work, an organizational transformation effort will not deliver results.

Ignoring the people side of change is costly

Poorly managing or ignoring the people side of change has many consequences:

• Productivity declines on a larger scale for a longer duration than necessary
• Managers are unwilling to devote time or resources needed to support the change
• Key stakeholders do not show up to meetings
• Suppliers begin to feel the impact and see the disruption caused by change
• Customers feel negative impacts of a change that should have been invisible to them
• Employee morale suffers and divisions between “us” and “them” begin to emerge 
• Stress, confusion and fatigue increase
• Valued employees leave the organization

Projects also suffer from missed deadlines, budget overruns, rework and even abandonment. These consequences have tangible impacts on project health and the organization. Fortunately, you can mitigate these issues when you deploy a structured approach to the people side of change.

Change management increases the likelihood success

A growing body of data shows the impact effective change management has on the probability of a project meeting objectives. Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking studies revealed that 93% of participants with excellent change management met or exceeded objectives, while only 15% of those with poor change management met or exceeded objectives.

In other words, projects with excellent change management were six times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management. What may be most enlightening about the research is that poor change management correlates with better success than applying none at all.

Prosci research even shows a direct correlation between effective change management and staying on schedule and on budget.

Individual vs. Organizational Change Management

Effectively managing change requires two perspectives: an individual perspective and an organizational perspective.

Individual Change Management

The individual perspective is an understanding of how people experience change. Prosci’s ADKAR Model describes successful change when an individual has:

If an individual gets stuck on a building block and cannot progress sequentially through the model, the change will not be as successful. The goal in leading the people side of change is ensuring that individuals have Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement.

Organizational Change Management

The organizational perspective of change management is the process and activities that project teams use to support successful individual change. If the ADKAR Model describes what an individual needs to make a change successfully, organizational change management is the set of actions to help build Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement across the organization. The Prosci Methodology is based on more than two decades of research and includes assessments and strategy to support targeted change management plans: 

• Master Change Management Plan
• ADKAR Blueprint
• Core Plans
  • Role-based plans
    • Sponsor Plan
    • People Manager Plan
  • Activity Plans
    • Communications Plan
    • Training Plan
• Extend Plans, as required

Change Management Roles

The change practitioner is like the director of the play working behind the scenes to enable actors on the stage. As a change enabler, the practitioner works to develop the change management strategy and plans while supporting and equipping senior leaders and people managers to fulfill their unique, employee-facing roles. 

For example, research shows that employees prefer to receive organizational messages about change from leaders at the top of their organization. And they prefer to receive messages about the change's impact on their day-to-day work from their immediate supervisor.

The practitioner's job is to enable key leaders and people managers to perform these and other employee-facing roles effectively. During times of change, the effectiveness of senior leaders and people managers in these critical roles will determine whether a project or initiative succeeds or fails.

How You Can Effect Successful Change

What can you do to become a more effective change leader? Begin applying change management on your projects and build change management competencies in your organization. These are the first steps to ensuring projects deliver their intended results.

The people side of change is not the soft side of change, it is the harder side of change. Investing the time and energy to manage the people side of your organizational efforts pays off in the end in terms of your effort's success and avoiding the numerous costs that plague poorly managed change.