Transforming Your Business: The Power of Effective Change Management
Transforming Your Business: The Power of Effective Change Management
In the past several years, we’ve seen competition intensify in the marketplace, employee expectations increase and digital disruption become more prevalent, stretching organizations thin. Digital transformation programs often struggle amongst this complexity, making it more critical than ever to focus on sustainable change for long-lasting success.
Research has shown that utilizing effective change management results in a higher likelihood of transformations reaching their objectives on-time and on-budget. Organizations no longer believe employee resistance is due to the solution being implemented, and instead are realizing resistance is related to the organization’s culture, prior experience with change, and misinformation.
BDO Digital’s Change Management Framework takes the guess work out of navigating the complex change experience; informed by years of real-world experience and Prosci’s industry-leading research. Our team has collaborated with clients of various sizes and in diverse industries, transforming complex changes into tangible results.
Defining Change Management
While technology itself offers numerous benefits, it is ultimately the people who need to embrace and effectively utilize the solution for business value realization. Change management is a structured process with a set of tools that are used to carry out the people side of change. Effective change management allows you to achieve outcomes faster, with less friction, and with a higher likelihood of success.
Effective change management strategies achieve success by incorporating the following:
- Strong leadership and alignment on the vision for the future state
- Clarity on how the change effort aligns with the organization’s strategy
- Alignment between individual beliefs and organization’s values regarding the transformation
- A skilled workforce with the right knowledge and capabilities to support the transformation
- Proactive plans to manage people resistance
- Effective communication strategies
- Defined business and outcome metrics to determine success and support with long-term sustainability
Change is often difficult, and without expertise, transformations are at a higher risk of requiring more time and budget, as well as increasing the likelihood of employee resistance. BDO Digital’s Change Management consultants provide a structured process aimed at ensuring your digital transformation achieves its desired goals.
Purpose
Employees are driven by the “why”. Achieving the desired business outcomes and ensuring a change is sustainable begins with building awareness of the purpose for change and WIIFM (what’s in it for me).
Insight
Data is utilized to guide the strategy and assess a transformation’s performance throughout its lifecycle. With objective information as a single source of truth, efforts can adapt proactively, and surprises can be avoided to ensure the transformation stays on track.
Engage
Employee and leadership engagement throughout the change journey is crucial for obtaining buy-in. Robust sponsorship and dedicated employee champions are among the key drivers of transformation success.
Adapt
Customized solutions that align with the organization’s workforce, culture, and history with change. While effective plans for success are detailed, they’re adaptable to accommodate unforeseen resistance or changing variables.
Prepare
- Define Success: What are we trying to achieve?
- Define Impact: Who must do their jobs differently and how?
- Define Approach: What will it take to achieve success?
Output Example: Change Management Strategy
The right preparation ensures that a transformation’s desired outcomes are defined, so they can be tracked and proactively managed. We adapt our approach to account for the organization’s current state and history with change by completing impact assessments, risk assessments, and conducting interviews with key stakeholders.
Manage
- Plan and Act: What will we do to prepare, equip, and support people?
- Track Performance: How are we doing?
- Adapt Actions: What adjustments do we need to make?
Output Example: Change Management Plan
Our plans for sponsorship engagement, communication, training, and resistance management are established in tandem rather than being standalone components. For change success, the impacted individuals must know why the change is happening, how it will benefit them, and what they need to do to make the required changes. We act on our strategy, track progress, and respond as needed to ensure the desired outcomes are met.
Sustain
- Review Performance: Where are we now?
- Activate Sustainment: What is needed to help ensure the change sticks?
- Transfer Ownership: Who will sustain outcomes?
Output Example: Summary Scorecard
As a transformation is wrapping up, we do more than simply check a box. We measure success against the desired outcomes identified at the onset of the transformation. Additionally, our ability to effectively partner with clients ensures that we can develop and implement a plan that will lead to long-term sustainability.
Communicate & Engage
Stakeholder Engagement & Management - Smartsheet-based stakeholder trackers for collaboration and general insights generated.
Communication Channels - Microsoft 365 Adoption partner utilizing Microsoft communication and collaboration platforms.
Experience Change
Interactive Training - SCORM approved platforms to develop interactive and engaging training.
Brand Visualization - Adobe partner utilizing the Creative Cloud Suite to create a custom, program brand experience.
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