Purpose

Champions will help reduce the strain on the core project team's resources and help drive community engagement.

How will Change Champions help you with your change and adoption journey?

• Engage champions to help scale adoption planning efforts (awareness and training tactics) across the organisation and project timelines 
• Amplify and reinforce the benefits of the change and success stories to date to their peers.
• Provide feedback on resources and challenges to the project/change team 
• Create the enthusiasm that grows the adoption of improved ways of working.
• Build a circle of influence amongst their teams.
• Bring the new ways of working to life across teams.
• Identify business challenges and possible solutions.

Activities

• Begin to put the building blocks of the change champions community together by defining the champions role and and responsibilities. Outline key activities for champions to carry out that support the user adoption plans created in Phase Two. 

• Gain internal buy-in for the defined champions' roles – from key stakeholders. Learn more through our 6-point guide to setting up a Change Champions Community.

• Create a readiness program for champions by defining what champions need to be trained on regarding the change; develop collaterals, resource stories, and examples to raise awareness and communicate to their peers as part of the overall change champion network. Learn more through our 6-point guide to setting up a Change Champions Community.

• Develop a champion recruitment strategy by identifying the business units that need change champions the most. Learn more through our 6-point guide to setting up a Change Champions Community.

• Set up a  Change Champions Community on your organisation's collaboration platforms - Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Skype, or Google Meet.  Share readiness items and knowledge sharing among champions and ask them for feedback. Learn more through our 6-point guide to setting up a Change Champions Community.

• Create and share with them the collateral (materials) that will support their work.

• Set up a weekly call for Change Champions and agree on the terms of reference for the calls. 

• Create recognition items for champions to thank and recognise their efforts.

Deliverables: 

• Change Champions Rollout Plan
• Lessons Learned Report
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Download Resources:

• Change Champions Programme Workbook. Download the template.
• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.

Purpose

An Early Adopter Programme(EAP) gives your organisation early insights into how you will bring the new changes to life for all users. Think of it as a dry run to a 'friendly' group that will help you prepare for a full-scale launch.

Working with Early Adopters lets you test your ideas and collect feedback that will help your Adoption and Change Team adapt its Change Execution Plan to the needs of your full-scale organization-wide launch.

Why you should launch an Early Adopters Programme (EAP)

• To identify pitfalls: The EAP allows you to identify potential stumbling blocks to help shape your final launch plan.
• To collect feedback: The EAP allows you to collect feedback from users on the identified goals and scenarios for the transformation change.
• To solve problems: The EAP allows you to troubleshoot potential issues with a smaller and 'friendlier' group of users before an organization-wide launch.
• To recruit champions: The EAP allows you to develop a pool of potential enthusiasts to recruit from. These individuals will help colleagues adopt the new change once the full rollout occurs.

Activities - Pre Launch

• Identify Early Adopters
• Identify applicable Business Scenarios for each group of early adopters. Learn how here.
• Work with Success Owners to define Success Criteria.
• Where applicable, complete Technical Readiness Assessment. 
• Integrate Early Adopters into the overall launch plan
• Support training preparation
• Setup channels for feedback
• Drive awareness to Early Adopters by executing the Communications Plan created in phase 2.
• Complete a survey to collect baseline feedback before launch

Activities - Launch

• Launch or deploy the change to Early Adopters
• Train Early Adopters by executing the training plans you created in phase 2 
• Provide coaching and perform informal 'check-in' sessions
• Launch a survey mid-way through launch to gather feedback from Early Adopters

Activities - Post Launch

• Continue to drive awareness to Early Adopters by executing the Change Adoption Plan you created in Step 2 above.
• This allows you to implement your Communications and Training Plans.
• Monitor and track progress
• Document lessons learned

Deliverables: 

• Early Adopters rollout plan
• Early Adopters post go-live end user survey
• Updated Adoption & Change Management Strategy
• Updated Change  Execution plans
• Lessons Learned Report
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Download Resources:

Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the template.

Purpose

This is an excellent opportunity to adapt your Change Adoption Plan following the successful launch and completion of the Early Adopters Programme (EAP). 

Activities

• Use feedback from Early Adopters to revisit your communications and training,
• Adjust, where necessary, your overall approach based on the input received.
• Embed your Early Adopters into a Champions Community and other identified end-user groups across the organisation. This ensures that Early Adopters can directly support their peers as they transition from the old to the new ways of working.
• Circulate a baseline survey before a full-scale launch. The goal of that survey is to gather information about users' knowledge of the change. The data collected, therefore, become the baseline benchmark for the full-scale launch. 
• Release another survey but this time mid-way through the full-scale launch and use the results to make any meaningful adjustments to the launch.

Deliverables: 

• Deployment plan
• Early Life Support plan
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

• Deployment Plan. Download the template.
• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.

Purpose

Early Life Support (ELS) is the time-limed support that you should provide end users when the change goes live.  You should run an ELS plan because: 

• It is an important contributor to user adoption.
• It serves as an overlap phase between service transition and service operation. In a technology change for example, this means all the critical technical support before go-live will still be available when end users begin using the live version of the technology.
• It becomes an important source for monitoring user usage.
• It provides insight into potential user resistance and interventions that can help break the bearers  to adoption

Activities

• Create your ELS plan, including the ELS exit criteria
• Assemble all resources that will support the implementation of the plan
• Brief all support groups, including appropriate training, where required.
• Communicate the ELS plan to end users
• For a technology change, execute the plan on 1st day of technology go-live.

Typical activities in an ELS plan include:

• Virtual floorwalking sessions
• On-site floorwalking sessions
• ELS query triage process
• End of day ELS calls
• Change Champions 

Deliverables

• ELS plan
• Confirmed and documented ELS resources
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.