So, you’ve initiated your plans for change within your organisation, but signs of resistance and other issues are starting to rear their head. Is it too late to consider applying change management to increase the success of your project?
The short answer is: no. Even if you start change management in the project implementation phase you are still 33% likely for your project to achieve its business results, according to Prosci's Best Practices research of more than 6,000 projects.
Ideally, change management will have been considered from the beginning of project planning. According to Prosci's research 83% of respondents wished they had started change management in the Initiation phase of the project but only 34% actually did so.
The good news is, it’s never too late to begin adding value and mitigating some of the issues in order to guide the final project to a more successful outcome through the use of effective change management. However if you start change management in the initiation phase your chance of project success jumps to 51%.
We've collated three steps you can take to help reinforce and sustain change, even when you have already started implementing it:
Collect and analyse feedback
Taking the time to collect honest feedback, not only from upper management but from employees who are directly impacted by the change project, can help you better understand the real issues and concerns. This can be done through surveys, workshops, management inspection and 1:1 interviews or, if time is stretched, you can arrange a one-hour meeting or conference call with a few representative people.
Diagnose gaps and manage resistance
Receiving feedback will provide you with a clearer idea of where gaps in training or employee resistance are present within your project. You will be able to determine where the biggest variances are from what you expected i.e. there may specific points of resistance by job role, functional area or geography, or indeed people may simply be getting one or more important process steps wrong..
If you want to learn more about how to effectively combat employee resistance, read our post: '3 Types of Change Management & How To Combat Them'
Implement corrective actions
At this stage, it is important to identify even the smallest successes, one key manager or department exhibiting the new behaviours required for example. Involve managers and senior leaders in publicly recognising and communicating these successes. As time progresses and adoption of the new ways of working required by your change grows it is time to then establish the formal checklist of criteria that need to be met before change management ends and the new ways of working transfer into business as usual.
Become a certified change management practitioner with CMC Partnership Asia!
Ensure you have the toolkit equipped to effectively implement change within your organisation with our upcoming Change Management Practitioner Programme.
More than 80% of Fortune 100 companies are already deploying Prosci's change management methodology within their organisation. Sign up for our next 3-day course on 07-09 November or 27-29 November and take your career to the next step by becoming certified.
