How to Do Organizational Change Management Right
What if we told you a change agent strategy, user sentiment and adoption, are some of the most important aspects of digital transformation? Yes, you need a budget, the necessary software and a deployment schedule to begin your digital transformation journey. Even more important, you need to create excitement within your organization for the change.
A positive change culture is fundamental to achieving transformational success. Your digital transformation efforts are less likely to be successful and meet the established objectives if you aren’t thinking about the impacts your transformation will have on the people within your organization.
Research consistently shows that initiatives with excellent change management are seven times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management.
Prosci 2024
Armed with this data, we strongly encourage you to focus on both the tangible and intangible aspects that need to be considered for digital transformation to be successful. It starts with ensuring the people within an organization are considered as the strategy for digital transformation is formed, implemented and maintained.
The first three pillars below represent the traditional approach to organizational change management (OCM):
- Change Agent Strategy – Collaborate with clients to identify and coach champions of digital transformation to support users and expand pilots to other sites.
- Communication – Execute on a co-created communication plan with the client. Additionally, create and distribute material to key stakeholders to improve awareness and adoption of digital transformation.
- Education & Training – Execute on training, strategy, material creation and delivery to ensure adherence to new ways of working.
Yet, why not consider three additional pillars for a unique, human-centered approach:
- Solution Design – Lead user-centered design workshops and develop tactical resolution plans to meet user needs.
- Program Leadership – Establish a program governance model to accelerate decision making and issue resolution.
- Value Realization – Define strategic imperatives and value targets to ensure results are measured and achieved.
Use these pillars to drive towards transformation excellence while maintaining a human centered approach to the digital transformation. Leaders must recognize the impact of digital transformation on the people who will use the system(s), change internal processes to accommodate the transformation, and ultimately ensure successful adoption and implementation. The people within an organization must be considered and brought along the organizational change journey. A carefully crafted and human centered OCM strategy is the only way to reach your desired outcomes.
As you think about your transformation future you can choose if you want to be seven times more likely to meet your objectives or not. The choice to catapult your value realization to the next level is yours!
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