A change practice is a consistent way of managing change across an organisation.
A change practice involves consistent change management tools, processes and skills. Your practice helps you and others manage change throughout your organisation. A simple and strong change practice serves as a force multiplier. When others follow your change practice, they act as your force multiplier. You then have a clever way for you to replicate and amplify your organisational change capabilities.
The most effective tools amplify force in the greatest magnitude. A power saw is far more effective at multiplying force than a handsaw is. A dump truck can carry more than a wheelbarrow. A rocket can launch a payload farther than a slingshot.
Investing in force multipliers makes sense because you can get done with the same amount of effort. By investing in force multipliers, you free up your time, energy, and attention to focus on building your business instead of simply operating it.
- Josh Kaufman on ‘force multipliers’
The practice helps change leaders with a strong start. Yet the practice should adapt to the change in question. The customer — impacted employees — guide how you manage organisational change. The tail does not wag the dog; the customer is the proverbial dog, while your change practice is the tail.
Thinking of adapting your change practice to a broader audience? For example, operational leaders without an organisational change or psychology background? If so, aim to add helpful frameworks on human behaviour and how people respond to change. Your framework adds another dimension to a series of change templates.
Your change practice may consider the entire change/project lifecycle. This includes templates and guidance in preparing for and creating awareness of change. Your practice also needs to guide leaders in how to support individuals during the transition and embed new ways of working.
We start by explaining how different types of interventions fit together into a systematic approach for managing organisational change.
Standardised change intervention tools are a key part of a change practice.
Standardised change intervention tools are a key part of a change practice. They are a set of activities that can be used to help an organisation achieve its goals in a specific area.
The main advantage of standardised change intervention tools is that they speed up the process of adoption. Familiar tools make it easier for people to deploy and adapt your practice. They also increase the value of your project by providing more qualified output, leading to results that are more consistent and effective.
Some examples of standardised change intervention tools include:
- assessments (e.g. change readiness assessments)
- templates (e.g. change plan template, communications plan template)
- checklists (e.g. readiness checklists, tactical communications timelines)
Ready to roll out a change practice? Ensure that project leaders and managers can access training in each tool within your change practice. Training should be scalable and with the long-term in mind. By this, document how a new starter can pick up and run with your change practice — videos and documentation support this ideal. Running in-person training? Aim to conclude your training with your audience demonstrating how they can use and adapt your practice to their projects.
If you develop a change practice for your organisation:
- Create a standardised change intervention tool kit. Standardisation helps organisations pivot to planned or unplanned changes within projects.
- Plan for ongoing change practice resource updates. Yes, your change practice templates aim to be “timeless”. Yet ongoing practice updates keeps content relevant to your organisation.
- Make sure the tool kit is accessible to all managers.
A stakeholder map is a visual representation of all project stakeholders and their influence on a project. There are different types of maps that can be created for different purposes, but the most common one is the power and influence matrix.
Stakeholder map
Your stakeholder map helps you categorise your stakeholders by important dimensions. For instance, power/influence and who needs regular engagement. Or by how you will engage versus when you engage. Or by stakeholders serving in project groups, as well as those who are in your change champion network.
Your stakeholder map informs how and when you engage each stakeholder. It usually takes me several hours of sustained effort to produce my first stakeholder map. I seek to map all stakeholders on a single page. This investment has a high return on my effort. Why? I have an ongoing map of my stakeholder terrain. I put names to faces, and know what team each stakeholder belongs to. My mapping efforts also help me identify new stakeholders that may not have been considered before. You do need to keep your stakeholder map fresh though — is there an easy way for you to do this?
Stakeholder mapping is a great way to get an overview of all your stakeholders at once. A decent map helps you identify likely supporters or detractors before beginning your project. This is where you work your trademark charm and thoughtful approaches as a change professional. Over time, you can ensure that everyone is on board from the outset …or you can adjust your strategy to account for opposition before it arises.
Change impact assessment
The purpose of a Change Impact Assessment is to understand the scope of change and help drive it. A former boss of mine would say that “…effective change starts with a comprehensive knowledge of change impacts”. A good assessment will provide you with information that helps answer questions like:
- What change will actually be introduced?
- How much effort will it take to install your organisational change?
- What are the impacts on people, processes, and technology (at least)? What about impacts on other facets of your organisation?
- What implications to training, communications and other parts of your change exist?
- What are the positives about moving to your future state? And the negatives?
Training needs analysis (TNA)
Training Needs Analysis is the process of identifying what training needs to take place and who needs it. It is a key part of change management and will help you:
- Identify the skills needed for employees to successfully adjust to new ways of working (thanks to your organisational change);
- How do you appropriately facilitate this skill-building/capability uplift;
- Training material development and training delivery approaches;
- Training budget and resourcing (typically performed by senior training or change management)
A successful TNA is based on all the information gathered during earlier phases, especially your stakeholder analysis/mapping and change impact assessment.
Change plan
For many years now, I have had my change plan on a single page… often in Microsoft Powerpoint. This plan on a page is often in Gantt chart format or small deviations from this format. I spend the first few weeks of my time on a new project formulating this plan. It takes me late nights and good chunks of my weekend to get to the first draft, but it’s worth it. My single page is then updated several times each day, especially in the earlier stages of my project. I can explain how I will lead organisational change within a few minutes to anyone who asks. Each time I walk someone through it, my narrative becomes clearer and stronger. To anyone checking in on my plan, I get the impression they can see that I’ve done my homework.
Good change practice incorporates the following elements:
- A clear outline. Describe the change on a single page. Explain why the change is happening, when it will happen and what will be different as a result of it.
- On another page, show your stakeholder map. This identifies who is affected by the change. When presenting to others, articulate stakeholders are impacted by your change. This step is applicable if stakeholders receive change differently. For example, particular employee cohorts are part of a pilot launch, while others are part of a later launch of your future state. This section should also outline any specific actions that will be taken to ensure they are engaged with this change process, e.g., training, stakeholder meetings etc.
- Details of how the change will be implemented. Consideration should be given to resources needed (financial, human and time) to make these changes in your project plan (e.g., extra staff members, new software/hardware).
- When presenting your plan, here’s a way to add life to your plan. Cite brief examples of similar projects where you or other change professionals used change tools in your practice.
Communications plan
A communications plan is a document that lays out the communications approach for a project. I tend to lay out my communications plan in a spreadsheet. This way I can easily filter and pivot table data into different reports, depending on the needs of my project team. Should I be called to present my progress on tactical communications at a Project Control Board, I can easily do so when I can manipulate a spreadsheet.
Your communications plan — be it in a document or spreadsheet — should consider the channels and media used, the messages and their content, the audiences, and the timing and frequency of communications. The plan should be consistent with the project plan and other plans.
Typical components of a communication plan include:
- Executive summary
- Objectives
- Audiences (who you want to communicate with)
- Messages (what you want to communicate)
- Channels (how you will communicate)
As a change practitioner, my communications are often at a “tactical” level. This means I send my messages directly to employees and their people leaders. I rarely send communications from “top-down” ie. from senior leaders, with the view these messages cascade down throughout my organisation. My organisational change messages are not “strategic”. Instead, they focus on awareness-raising for changes ahead. Later in the project lifecycle, my messages become concrete, practical advice in preparing for change.
Change message templates are a great way to help people learn about and transition to change. This can be done using tools that combine messaging with other capabilities such as training and job aids. Change messages are a communication tool to inform employees of changes, why they are occurring and what they need to do differently.
Creating a change message template is relatively easy, but it’s important that you consider these things:
- What content should be included?
- Does the format allow for regular updates?
- How will you distribute?
- How can managers support the content and reinforce the messages?
- What employees need to stop, start and keep doing as part of their work in response to each change.
I often have a templated message sequence in a single Word or Google Doc, although my colleagues tend to break out each message in a separate file.
- [Time to send] eg. “3 weeks before go-live”
- [Channel] eg. Project team inbox
- [Subject] eg. Your pay is impacted — will you miss out?
- [Employee cohort] eg. early pilot group
- [Description of the change and why it is needed] (i.e., challenge the current way that we’re doing things, what we want to achieve, how this will help you)]
- [What would need to stop, start or continue?]
- [Assumptions & Loose Ends]
Be a change management hero
“Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.”
Thomas Carlyle, essayist and historian
Putting a change practice into place signals you as a senior change practitioner. You are beyond surviving your immediate project and have even joined the dots on quite a few projects. Your experience gives you pattern recognition. With confidence in your abilities and experience, you can create a bespoke change practice for your organisation. I liken creating a strong and simple change practice as a way to prepare for the future. I like to work hard early on, so I can “sleep well when the wind blows”.
A sound change practice helps anyone “join the dots” on the first steps they need to make when leading change. These first steps give your practice followers confidence when the wind starts to blow. The wind doesn’t take long to blow — changes, scope creep, delays and stakeholder upsets don’t take long to happen. Your practice followers may be Change Analysts, Project Managers or other project professionals. Their projects may be heavy or light-touch; does your change practice cater to both?
On the face of it, establishing a change practice sounds like a daunting responsibility: how do you know what to do? How can you ensure you can act effectively?
Well, here’s how:
- Start by looking at your current approach and practice. The common denominator of successful projects is they have strong change management practices in place from day one.
- Quickly amass the change interventions mentioned in this article into one place, such as a SharePoint folder. Your organisation may have existing templates. You can also google various templates or consult your change colleagues.
Setting up a change practice is hard work. Yet it is an effective way for you to amplify your change capability — and leave your legacy for your organisation.
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.