Purpose

To realise transformational change goals, you need a team to do the day-to-day work of enabling the change. That team is your adoption and change team.

Activities

(1) Define your adoption and change team structure. There are two main types of team structures: centralised and decentralised. In the centralised team structure, the change team sits within a pool of change practitioners, usually in a business function like Organisational Change Management (OCM). Change practitioners are then 'loaned' to transformation delivery teams as and when required. On the other hand, the change team is sourced and placed within the transformation delivery team in a decentralised team structure. The option you pick for your transformation change initiative will depend on how your organisation is structured. See an example here.

(2) Assemble the team. The Change Team doesn't have to be big, but it does have to be active. The team should have at least three individuals who have the following skills and capabilities:

• Experience (or at least an appreciation for) managing the people side of change using a structured change management approach. 
• The ability and willingness to contribute sufficient time to the effort
• A thorough understanding of the change to be supported
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• The support of leadership

You should at least have the following Change Team roles defined and assigned:

• Change Manager/Analyst/Consultant. Learn more.
• Training Lead. Learn more.
• Communications Lead. Learn more.

Other team members could include the HR Manager, Training Lead, Communications Lead, Community Lead, Department Leads (stakeholders), and IT Specialists.

Deliverables: 

Make use of the templates and guides in the 'Resources' section to generate the following deliverables:

• Change Team Role Profile Summary
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.
• Change Team Role Profile Summary. Download the template.

Purpose

Transforming to new ways of working requires buy-in and support from across the business and among important stakeholder groups. And that is the same when planning, managing and reinforcing technology, process or organisational design change. 

To get the buy-in you need to implement the change, you need three key stakeholder groups you should consider building your adoption and change team around. Make sure to engage these stakeholders early on:

• Executive Sponsors 
• Business Success Owner
• Early Adopters and Change Champions
• Managers, Supervisors, and Team Leads

Activities

• Identify key Executive Sponsors. Learn how.
• Identify Success Owners. Learn how.
• Identify Early Adopters and Change Champions. Learn how.
• Identify a Training Lead. Learn how.
• Identify a Communications Lead. Learn how.
• Document role descriptions for all roles identified. It would help if you did so by referring to the Team & Stakeholder Role Profile Summary and Workbook template and updating the Change Adoption Launchpad Master Workbook [download copies from the resources section below]

Deliverables: 

Make use of the templates and guides in the 'Resources' section to generate the following deliverables:

• Team & Stakeholder Role Profile Summary and Workbook
• Stakeholder Register
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

• Change Team Role Profile Summary. Download the template.
• Stakeholder Register. Download the template.
• Change Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.

Purpose

Business objectives underpin why a transformational change is under consideration. Therefore, you must align all identified stakeholders around a clear strategic objective for the change. The strategic objective(s) must also align with the overall organisational vision.

There are many reasons why you should consider defining strategic objectives. Some of these may include:

• To refine the core objectives of the change initiative.
• To identify some of the organisation's challenges or pain points related to the objectives of the change initiative.
• To identify areas in which your organisation would like to improve.
• To identify the organisation's strategic initiatives or current transformation projects that the new change initiative can support.

Activities to complete

• Partner with your change team to define change objectives
• Identify the critical business objectives and challenges and recognise areas of opportunity to improve work processes. 
• Host a Change Discovery workshop to delve deeper into current challenges, strategies and goals. [Download a template in the resources section to support his activity]. 
• Create a Benefits map to map all expected Change outputs to business outcomes and then to expected change benefits. Finally, map the expected business benefits to Strategic organisational business goals.
• Document the Change Discovery workshop outputs into a list of critical findings summarising the critical drivers for change. It would help if you did so by updating the Change Adoption Master Workbook [download a copy from the resources section below]

Deliverables: 

Make use of the templates and guides in the 'Resources' section to generate the following deliverables:

• Completed Change Discovery Workshop Prep Workbook.
• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources:

• Change Discovery Workshop Prep Sheet. Download the workbook.
• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.

Purpose

Scenarios cover how your people will use the new system, technology or process to address business challenges and achieve expected organisational and individual outcomes.

• They allow impacted groups/user groups to understand how the change can help them achieve more.
• They act as input and validation of change initiative awareness messaging.
• They support awareness and readiness activities by putting the change outputs in context; people will know when and how to use them.

Activities

• Use our Scenario Creation Framework (SCF) to create scenarios for multiple teams and departments. [see example] or download the workbook in the resources section below.

• Prioritise your business scenarios. It is essential to prioritise so you know where to focus first. Gauging impact and complexity will help you understand which scenarios will provide the most impact with the fastest and which require more planning.  See the example of the Scenario Prioritisation Index (SPI) or download the workbook in the resources section below.

• Define a "Minimum Viable Experience" for each user scenario for that change. These are the must-have capabilities the new tool, process, technology or system must have, or new service must deliver. Doing this early will allow you to control the scope of your pilot and deployment phases. 

• Document your scenarios. It would help if you did this by updating the Change Adoption Launchpad Master Workbook. Download a copy from the resources section below.

Deliverables: 

Make use of the templates and guides in the 'Resources' section to generate the following deliverables:

• Complete the Scenario Creation Framework and Prioritisation Index Workbook. 
• Scenario Prioritisation Chart using the SPI
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook.

Resources:

• Scenario Creation and Prioritisation Index Workbook. Download the workbook.
• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.

Purpose

Impact groups are the people who will engage with the outputs of the transformational change. They do not necessarily have to be end users, as you can have impacted people who wouldn't necessarily be users. However, knowing who the impact groups are early on is crucial to understanding how you will manage resistance to change.

Activities

• Identify impacts groups by business functions
• Identify impact groups by use cases/business scenarios
• Identify impact groups by roles
• Identify impact groups' organisational level
• Identify impact groups by the degree of impact
• Identify impact groups by location

Deliverables

• Change Impact Mapping
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

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

Purpose

Before embarking on any change initiative - including a transformation change - the risk of the change must be understood and quantified. And to understand and quantify the risk of the change to your organisation, you should conduct a bt to evaluate your organisation's preparedness for a transformation change. Your organisation's preparedness for a transformation change depends on whether it can initiate the change, execute it, and ensure user adoption and continued usage of the change. 

The lower the readiness for change, the higher the risk of the change to your organisation. Your organisation's preparedness for a transformation change depends on whether it can initiate the change, execute it, and ensure user adoption and continued usage of the change.

So how do you mitigate the risk of the change to your organisation? 

To mitigate the risk of the change, you should use the outputs/results of your change readiness and risk assessment as inputs to your change management strategy and change management plans - such as resistance management, training, and communications plans. So, therefore, the change management strategy and plans will be the mitigating tools to manage the changing risk.

Activities

You should perform two activities. These are:

• Change Impact Assessment 
• Change Readiness Assessment

Follow the steps below to complete the two activities.

(1) Define how you will measure readiness and determine risk tolerance: you should define how you will measure readiness and risk tolerance levels. It would help if you considered measuring your change readiness quantitatively, as it makes the results easy to interpret.

(2) Determine data collection methods: determine what sources you need and how you will collect the data: depending on who and how many people want to collect data, you should consider either a verbal or online survey. For example, you should consider in-person verbal surveys for senior leadership surveys. On the other hand, to survey a wider employee population, you should consider online surveys.

(3) Design your survey questionnaire: To understand how you will measure readiness and how and what data to collect, you should proceed to design your survey questionnaire.

(4) Perform a change impact assessment: when you've received the survey results, you should perform change discovery to understand the features of the change. Change discovery diagnostic will help you understand the who, how, and when. In addition, it helps you understand how big or small the impact of the change is on your organisation, people, customers, and, where applicable, society. 

It would help if you asked the following questions when performing a Change Impact Assessment (CIA):

• What is the reach (size) of the transformation change? That is, how many employees will be impacted? How broadly will this change reach across our workforce? To answer these questions, you should find out the percentage of the workforce that will be affected by the change, that is, will it affect everybody, or will it only majorly some business divisions, regional offices or maybe just some individuals? 

• What is the complexity of executing the change? How simple or complex will the execution of this change be? Does it require the replacement of systems or software? Can it be managed internally, with existing staff? Does it require 3rd party system integrations?

• What type of transformation change is it? For example, for a technology change: is this a complete replacement of one technology with new technology? Is it a full or partial system upgrade? For an organisational design transformation: Is it a mini-operating or enterprise-wide model change? 

• How different will things be after the transformational change? How different will things feel after this change goes live? Does making this change require a change in workflows? Will it change anybody's job description? 

(5) Perform organisational readiness analysis: to understand the impact of the change on your organisation, you should perform an organisational readiness assessment. Organisational readiness assessment will help determine whether your organisation is resilient enough to withstand the impact of the change.

Consider the  following when performing an organisational change readiness assessment:

• How do the goals of the change align with the organisational strategy? Strategic alignment is essential to gain senior leadership's sponsorship and overall support. They need to be able to tie the goals of the change to the overall strategic objectives of the organisation. Employees also need to see how they will help advance the organisation's vision for the future.

• How will the organisation's culture change to make way for the new? Organisations can sometimes get stuck in their old ways. For example, will the change present significant changes to how people work? If yes, consider whether this will be a significant barrier to user adoption.

• Is there an overwhelming visible leadership and sponsorship? Ensuring active sponsorship for the change at a senior executive level within the organisation and engaging this sponsorship to achieve the desired results is essential when determining change readiness.

• What is the overall employee appetite for transformational change? Is there an appetite for the change? Are people looking to change? These questions help determine the anticipated employee resistance to the transformational change.

• How much more change can the organisation withstand? Assessing the organisation's capacity for change is critical to determining readiness and ascertaining the risk level of the change. If the organisation is trying to implement too many change initiatives at a time, this may pose an increased risk to the organisation.

• Will the change build people's capability to manage future change? You should assess whether the change will improve skills and behaviours in the organisation to support other areas of the organisation. Suppose the change will only seek to improve one part of the organisation and reduce the capabilities of other parts. In that case, that indicates low readiness and high risks to the organisation.

• Will the change leave the organisation in good shape to undertake future change? Even after a transformational change, most organisations will have to evolve so that they may undertake a future change initiative. If the current technological change makes the organisation vulnerable to future change, it may indicate low readiness for change and, therefore, the higher the risk it poses to the organisation.

(5) Calculate your Change Risk Score. By combining the results of the Change Readiness Assessment and the results of the Change Impact Assessment, you can determine the associated risks of the change.  

Note the following:

• The lower the Organisational Readiners, the higher the change risks
• The higher the Organisational Readiness, the lower the change risks
• The lower the Change Impact, the lower the Change Risks
• The higher the change impact, the higher the Change Risks.

Use our Assessment Tools

• Use the Change Readiness Assessment Tool (CRaT) to assess your organisation's readiness for the change.

• Use the Change Impact (CIA) Calculator to assess the overall impact of the change.

• Use our Change Readiness and Risk Assessment Workbook in the resources section below.

Deliverables

• Change Readiness and Risk Assessment.
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook.

Resources 

• Change Risk Assessment workbook. Download the workbook. 
• Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook. Download the workbook.
• Change Impact Assessment Calculator. Access the tool
• Change Readiness Assessment Tool (CRaT). Access the tool.

Purpose

A fundamental component of delivering a significant transformational change programme is having specific resources assigned. These resources may include skilled people, processes, technology, available budget, and time. The critical caveat is that the focus area here is mainly resources that impact the people side of change.

Key considerations before you begin

To complete this step, always begin by asking the right questions:

To complete this step, always begin by asking the right questions:

People-related resources

• Do you have a skilled Change Team to support the delivery? If yes, are they available throughout the change delivery? If not, who can help identify and onboard them? 

• Do you have the time and dedication of our business sponsors and stakeholders to support the rollout and adoption of the change?

• Do you need other resources to support the Change Team?

Budget and infrastructure-elated resources: 

• Do you require a dedicated budget for the adoption and change delivery workstream? If yes, is the allocated budget sufficient?

• Do we need systems or applications to support the rollout and adoption of the change?

Activities

• Create a resource allocation activity summary. See the example here. Also download a copy of the Resources Planning Workbook in the resources section.
• Assemble a list of required resources.
• Secure a budget to acquire the resources.
• Onboard the resources and provide them with everything they need to succeed.
• Create a heatmap to track where and when resources are deployed. See the example heatmap.

Deliverables

• Resources Plan.
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

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

Purpose

For every transformational change initiative, you define success by the value realised. But what is value? It is the expected business outcomes from the change. 

But we know that you only realise value when people adopt the change. Therefore measure success in two complementary ways:

• Business outcomes
• End-user adoption

A formal set of success criteria is critical for measuring the impact of introducing change into an organisation. While some results will be seen and felt quickly, collecting a comprehensive and accurate representation of the gains from the new technology requires planning. You'll need to determine what should be measured, create the data collection surveys, and select the data distribution and collection dates. 

Defining Success Criteria is about (1) establishing KPI benchmarks; (2) creating the metrics for each KP and reporting on those KPIs.

Activities

• Define your KPIs (KPI Definitions): Choose the definitions that will form the building blocks of your KPIs. You should include the KPI measure or KPI name as a fundamental measurement parameter.  Learn more about KPI measures and other  KPI definitions.

• Document how you will measure your KPIs (KPI measures): Choose the KPIs that will be measured or tracked. Ensure you choose KPIs for both business outcomes and user adoption. An example of a KPI for business outcomes is "The number of remote inspections completed by field engineers". An example of a KPI for user adoption is "active usage: how many users actively use the system/feature?"

• Create the success criteria for each KPI by creating success scorecards to track and report on business outcomes and user adoption metrics. See an example success scorecard for business outcomes and an example success scorecard for user adoption.

• Ensure sponsors and success owners agree with the KPI definitions, measures, and success criteria defined.

• After rollout, use the end-user surveys to measure satisfaction and progress against your benchmark. 

• Update the Change Planing & Execution Master Workbook

Deliverables: 

Make use of the templates and guides in the 'Resources' section to generate the following deliverables:

• KPI Definitions
• Success Criteria Scorecard
• User Survey Questions
• Updated Change Planning & Execution (CPE) Master Workbook

Resources

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