When shopping for a car, your budget drives you toward the make and model that you can afford. With a limited budget, would you test drive a Tesla or a Toyota?
Many mid-size organizations face the same predicament when developing their enterprise change management capability. Just like the family that needs a reliable vehicle and wants to get the most for their money, small and medium-sized companies need consistent enterprise change management to help them thrive and survive.
Don’t let budget constraints limit your opportunity to make innovative changes that set your business apart. Learn why every business needs enterprise change management, even on a limited budget, and the three must-haves to help you get there.
Why do small and medium-sized companies need Enterprise Change Management (ECM)?
Change management isn’t just for big companies going through large transformations. Medium-sized and small businesses also need to help guide their employees through change. This is more than applying change management project by project. It means embedding change management practices in your organization and building it as a capability and competency.
According to Gartner, a significant majority of organizations, around 75%, expect to increase the number of major change initiatives they undertake in the next three years, indicating a substantial amount of anticipated change within businesses today.
The result of ECM is that change management becomes the norm and a consistent framework within your organization. With each transition, leaders can influence the rate of employee adoption by being visible and active throughout the process; and by providing clear and concise two-way communications with employees. Ensuring feedback loops offers opportunities for employees to understand the ‘why’ of the change and the consequences of remaining stagnant.
Three ECM Must-Haves
How can you build ECM without breaking the bank? Prioritize those actions that deliver the greatest impact.
Must Have #1 – A Change Methodology
One of the key ECM development practices is to establish the change methodology you want your organization to follow. Think of this as the standard people-side approach used to ensure each project has a similar process from the project planning stage to the closing stage.
Below is the simple three-phase change methodology used at Avaap to get you started:
1. Assess and Align to understand the scope of change.
2. Plan and Activate based on the scope of change identified.
3. Measure and Sustain to ensure the organization is thriving during change.
The second part of developing the change methodology is to determine the tactics and deliverables you will use in each phase of your approach.
For example, in the Assess and Align phase you will want to align leaders on the scope of the change and evaluate the change impacts, stakeholders impacted, and organizational readiness to develop a change strategy to drive the intended project outcomes.
During the Plan and Activate phase you need to start building your employee experience and feedback plan, communications and engagement plan, and training plan to lead the organization through the change based on the information gleaned from the first phase.
Once you reach the Measure and Sustain phase, you are looking to create proper feedback mechanisms to look for and diagnosis gaps and take corrective actions for your change. You will also want to build the proper metrics to measure success.
Must Have #2 – A Change Intake Process and Intake Assessment
If you don’t have a handle on the amount of change taking place in your organization, it will be near impossible to manage the people side of change. To help your organization understand the changes impacting them on a holistic basis, you must develop an intake process and intake assessment.
The intake process should include working with your project management team and other key leaders throughout your company to develop a portfolio of changes taking place across your organization.
The intake assessment is the opportunity to delve deeper into each change to determine the size and scope and the organizational readiness of your company for each change.
Take a moment and think about the changes taking place in your organization and ask yourself:
• How many departments are impacted by the change?
• Does the change have an active and supportive sponsor?
• Do employees support this change, or do they think the change is not necessary?
• Do employees perceive past changes positively or negatively?
• Are there a few changes underway or is everything changing?
When you combine your intake assessments together, you will start to see a picture of the change support needed to help your organization manage the entire change portfolio.
Must Have #3 – A Change Coalition
With a limited budget, you probably think you also have limited resources for change management support. Think again. Another priority for building ECM is to use and develop the resources you have. Building a change coalition is the perfect way to assure you have sponsorship support at each level of the organization and across various departments to advocate for the change, share the change messages, and acquire the feedback you need to improve your adoption metrics.
Here are a few tips for building your change coalition:
• Include employees from all levels and departments of your organization (ex: senior leaders, managers/supervisors, employees in HR, finance, legal, etc.).
• Look for team members with experience in organizational change, even if it is limited in nature.
• Involve employees with both positive and negative outlooks on change.
• Skill up your change coalition on your organization’s change management methodology.
Consider the following characteristics when choosing your change coalition members:
• Effective communicator.
• Good listener.
• Respected among their peers.
• Adaptable and approachable.
• Embraces new opportunities.
• Problem solver.
When you build a change coalition, you’ve also created your change advocates — the team of employees needed to help make change happen.
The three must haves covered in this article are a great start to help you build your change management foundation. Another opportunity you might consider is completing a Change Maturity Assessment to identify your current change capability and build a roadmap to take you to the level you desire. Reach out to the Avaap OCM team to learn more about this assessment and other ways to move your change efforts in the right direction.
Carrie King is a Practice Vice President at Avaap with more than 25 years of experience in change management strategy, design, and execution. Carrie has worked with a variety of industry leading companies on everything from software implementations to cultural transformations. Her passion for helping others understand and build their change maturity has led to the development of several assessment tools and training workshops that support clients in their quest to be self-sufficient in their change endeavors.