Change Management & User Adoption

Clearly define success, understand change impacts, equip program and team leaders to excel through change, and get your initiative across the finish line confidently

Driver

To us, change management refers to the people side of change — the efforts taken to bring each individual participating in the effort along their change journey, to culminate in their successfully using the new solution, process, etc. Our expertise is informed by Prosci, the global leader in change management solutions.

If you’re starting out on a major initiative, we’ll gladly create a change management strategy, relevant plans, and fit change readiness activities into the program timeline. We’re willing to plug in on a longer-term basis as needed to lead your change management effort or equip the existing team. We’ve found great success in using Prosci’s methodologies and resources over the years, and a certified Prosci Change Management Practitioner will guide this effort for your organization. 

If you’re already knee-deep in a transformation program and want guidance to ensure people have what they need to be enthusiastic adopters of the new roles, processes, and technology, we can help. We’ll ask some thoughtful questions, review your change and adoption plans, and add/update content as is needed to connect the dots between today and new ways of working.

Depending on where you are in your change management process — starting out or already in the middle — you’ll be equipped with strategies and guidance on how to implement the change as well as help your employees adapt to the change. We’ll help you ensure that once your change initiative is ready, your team is ready to adopt it.

Ultimately, we’ll work with you to maximize the chances that the change is understood, well-received, and adopted by the team for the long run.

Outcome

Approach

The basics of change management can sound, well, basic, but those who’ve led change efforts in the past know that there’s a lot of effort, experimentation, and creativity in working through them.

At a high level, we will:

  • Develop a clear grasp of what you’re trying to achieve

  • Assess your readiness to change, and help to shore up any areas that

  • Understand who is affected by the change and how

  • Get each individual through Prosci’s ADKAR – that is:

    • Awareness of the need for change

    • Desire to participate and support the change

    • Knowledge on how to change

    • Ability to implement required skills and behaviors to change

    • Reinforcement to sustain the change

  • Equip the sponsor and team leaders to help people understand and work through their change journey

Working with your team, we will develop any resources or materials needed to support the change.

This often includes communication supports — talking points, infographics, standard presentation or email content — as well as planning out readiness efforts like pulse surveys, training, and extra adoption support at crucial points in the program.

To be clear, training and adoption efforts are intertwined but accomplish slightly different goals:

  • Training provides the information and tools to succeed in the to-come state. This may include how to use technology or new standard operating procedures to follow. In any case, we prefer to start by walking through team members on how their everyday experience will change. We’ll incorporate content from user manuals and system training, but these will be woven into functional experiences.

  • Adoption helps us stick with the new processes in the long run. Adoption also minimizes frustration with something new causing employees to fall back on manual workarounds such as another spreadsheet to manage the work. Having the lens of adoption will help us design sessions and artifacts to connect the change with the big picture – and make sure to answer “why?”

Using our catalog of the teams and roles within them that are impacted by the change, we’ll specify training and adoption activities by team and/or role for greatest effect. We’ll plan a mix of instructor-led training, hands-on practice, and reference materials to give people the information and equipping they need, when and how it best serves them.

We’ll prioritize training efforts on the portion of the system or process that will be used the most — and provide easily searchable job aids for the less-used items.

What do you mean, readiness to change?

We’re big fans of the insights and resources from Prosci, the global leader in change management solutions. We like to use the Prosci Change Triangle (PCT) to look at the critical aspects of success in any major initiative, understand their current state, and recommend any improvements your readiness to excel through change. The PCT aspects of change are:

  • A reason for change: clearly defined benefits and objectives

  • Leadership and sponsorship: how the effort is governed, and how teams get their direction

  • Project management: the technical side of the effort, focused on designing, developing, and delivering a working solution

  • Change management: the people side of the effort, focusing on getting people to engage, adopt, and ultimately use the solution

The PCT assessment includes ten questions for each of the elements, and scores indicate which area(s) need immediate action, further investigation, or no change needed.

Interested in learning more?