Author: Tim Creasy
Why is change management important? Because change is continually impacting organizations today. But primarily because it focuses on the people side of change, which is essential for achieving successful outcomes.
New projects and initiatives emerge daily to boost performance, increase profits, and sharpen the competitive edge. Whether you’re implementing technology for a mobile workforce, reengineering processes for compliance, or transforming the customer experience, one factor remains crucial: people. They are the key to achieving your intended outcomes—and that’s why change management is so important.
What Is Organizational Change Management?
Organizational change management is the application of a structured change management process and set of tools focused on leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome.
Through organizational change management, you can maximize the people-dependent portion of a project’s return on investment (ROI)—the portion of total ROI that results from employees adopting and using the solution.
To achieve the ROI goals and other benefits, organizations can use the Prosci Methodology, which includes the Prosci Change Triangle (PCT) Model, Prosci ADKAR® Model, and Prosci 3-Phase Process:
The Prosci Change Triangle (PCT) Model, is designed to ensure that all the critical aspects of a change initiative are aligned and healthy. This model is used by teams to assess and improve the overall health of a project by focusing on four key areas: success, leadership/sponsorship, project management and change management. By examining these aspects, the PCT Model provides a structured way to ensure that all necessary elements for change are in place and working together harmoniously.
The Prosci ADKAR Model is an essential tool for understanding and managing individual change. ADKAR is an acronym for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. These are the five elements that individuals need to have for change to be successful. The model is used to identify where people might be struggling in their change journey and what support they need to progress. By focusing on these elements, our ADKAR Model helps facilitate a smoother transition for individuals within an organization.
Lastly, the Prosci 3-Phase Process serves as a comprehensive roadmap for managing change effectively across an organization. This process is divided into phases that guide change practitioners in planning, implementing and sustaining change efforts. This ensures that both the technical and people sides of change are addressed. And because successful organizational change starts at the individual level, change managers use the Prosci 3-Phase Process to scale ADKAR across organizations of all sizes.
Although change starts at the individual level, leadership plays an important role in the organization’s success. Equipping leaders with the necessary skills and information needed to lead the change is imperative.
The Importance of Change Management
Change management is necessary because it guides how we prepare, equip, and support individuals to successfully adopt change, driving organizational success. Adopting change management practices has many advantages for organizations. By helping people through their individual change journeys, you can:
Address different impacts on people and teams
Your projects and initiatives significantly impact the ways individual people do their work on a day-to-day basis.
Change can impact processes, systems, tools, job roles, workflows, mindsets, behaviors and more. Each change impacts different groups within your organization differently. A new electronic medical records system will affect people in the IT department in some ways and clinical users in completely different ways, while the change may be insignificant to the finance team.
Prosci 10 Aspects of Change Impact
To manage these impacts during times of change, change management professionals employ a structured approach that includes helpful knowledge, processes and tools.
Thrive in an ever-changing world
The days of implementing one large change every 36 months are long gone. Organizations are facing faster, more complex, more interdependent, and more cross-functional change than ever before. By applying change management, organizations deliver results on each change more effectively, even while managing multiple unique changes.
An organization that works to build change competencies in its people will improve over time, maturing into a change-ready organization with the capacity to handle faster, more complex, more interdependent, and more cross-functional change and achieve strategic advantages.
Deliver people-dependent ROI
Organizations undertake initiatives to capitalize on an opportunity, solve a problem, or improve performance. You can achieve some of the desired outcomes simply by installing the solution. However, much of the benefit is tied to people changing the way they work.
In the Prosci CMROI Model, this is the “adoption contribution” of the project—the percentage of project benefits that depend on people changing their day-to-day work. For important projects, that number is commonly 80% to 100%.
Applying change management prepares, equips, and supports people so they can successfully change how they do their jobs. This enables organizations to capture the adoption contribution and people-dependent portion of the project’s return on investment (ROI).
Close the gap between requirements and results
All too often, organizational changes meet requirements without delivering expected results. They deliver the necessary outputs without delivering the expected outcomes. This is what happens when the organization focuses efforts on the solution itself rather than its benefits.
Closing the gap between requirements and results, between outputs and outcomes, and between solutions and benefits requires focusing on the people who must use the change every day.
How will you reap benefits from a solution if people don’t adopt and use it? Applying change management enables you to close the gaps by preparing, equipping, and supporting people through the change so they can bring it to life in their daily work.
Increase the likelihood of project success
The data is clear. The 12th Edition of the Prosci Best Practices in Change Management research report consistently shows that initiatives with excellent change management are seven times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management. In fact, by simply moving from “poor” to “fair,” change management increases the likelihood of meeting objectives threefold. The better you apply change management, the more likely you are to deliver on project objectives.
Correlation of Change Management Effectiveness With Meeting Objectives
Mitigate mission-critical risk
Ignoring the people side of change can result in costs and risks. When you ignore the adoption and usage of a solution, you focus exclusively on meeting technical requirements. This leads to what Prosci calls “RE” costs from redesigning, reworking, revisiting, redoing, retraining, rescoping, and, in some cases, retreating.
Failing to plan for and address the people side of change can lead to greater absenteeism and attrition, reduced productivity, lower morale, and disengaged employees. Change management helps you mitigate those mission-critical risks.
Limit variability in change
Change is difficult. The status quo is always preferred. Change doesn’t come easily to individuals or organizations, so without effective management, you’re likely to encounter obstacles that can lead to wasted time and resources.
To the extent possible, you want to remove the chance or variability associated with project changes and initiatives. Project management accomplishes this through sequencing milestones, deliverables, activities, and resources over the project or initiative’s lifecycle. But these actions only address the technical side of a change as you design, develop and deliver it.
Unless you proactively support and guide people through the impacts of project changes, you leave success to chance. Change management mitigates or removes variability by preparing, equipping and supporting employees so they can engage, adopt and use the change successfully.
Prosci’s Unified Value Proposition
Increase change capacity
Building organizational capability in change management increases the organization’s capacity to handle more change while reducing disruption. This is essential, as many organizations face change saturation and struggle to balance numerous change initiatives at the same time.
Change management models, such as the Prosci ADKAR Model, play a vital role in increasing change capacity. By systematically guiding individuals through the elements of change, our ADKAR Model ensures that employees are supported at every step.
Provide a common language and consistent application
A common language in change management creates clarity, alignment and understanding across an organization. It enables more effective communication, helps teams comprehend change processes, and supports smoother transitions by providing a shared framework for discussing organizational transformations.
Similarly, a standardized process, like the Prosci 3-Phase Process, plays an important role in ensuring the consistent application of change management principles. By following this structured approach, change practitioners can create more cohesive efforts across departments, reducing confusion and aligning teams around shared goals.
Prosci 3-Phase Process
Reduce barriers to change
Effective change management actively prevents resistance as a primary approach to resistance management. This involves understanding resistance triggers, anticipating and removing barriers, and supporting people through transitions. The structured approaches in the Prosci Methodology, including our ADKAR Model, build in these proactive measures, equipping organizations to implement transformative initiatives successfully.
To achieve this, the Prosci Methodology provides targeted techniques. It emphasizes strong leadership actions and an integrated approach between project management and change management. Aligning technical project goals with change management activities also ensures that employee needs are prioritized, fostering a seamless and cohesive transition.
