To be a successful change practitioner, having access to a structured set of tools is imperative, and helps make the job a lot easier.
As a Prosci certified change practitioner, you have access to a wonderful resource within the Prosci Portal called Proxima. Proxima was designed to successfully navigate your way through managing the people side of change.
For those of you who cannot work without structure, like me, this is ideal. Proxima guides you through the Prosci 3-phase process with cleverly designed prompts.
Need to explain the value of Change Management? Not to worry - Proxima has a space for that. Need to put your project on 1 page? Proxima has something called the 4P’s -an immensely powerful tool that sums up your project’s benefits to the organisation on 1 page.
Proxima allows you to create a new project from scratch, collate all the information in one place, share it with your colleagues, and collaborate with them.
The thing I really enjoy about Proxima is that it makes you think hard about your project and the employees impacted by the project, it sparks conversations and gives you a concrete application to work with and to track where you are in the change management process.
There are many wonderful functionalities within Proxima, and once you get started you will find the tools that work best for you and your organisation. So,
without further ado…. Here are my 3 favourite tools to use in Proxima.
Risk Assessment
The most important thing here is not the risk assessment itself, but the Risk Grid Customisation Guidelines that helps you to interpret the scores of the Risk Assessment. So, if you scored quite high (4 or 5 in any category) there are handy tips and mitigation strategies to help you move the organisation through change.
Whether you are facing executives or senior managers that lack skills and knowledge with regards to change competency or your organisation is over saturated with change, the Customisation Guidelines gives you a myriad of ways and strategies to mitigate those factors, so that you can implement your change successfully, even with the stakes against you.
You have the option to do a high-level assessment of the overall change, or even go down to a more granular level by doing a risk assessment for each group to ascertain which groups you need to focus on just a little bit more.
Change Management Plans
The ADKAR Blueprint (a plan that sets out the activities to be undertaken to address each stage of ADKAR) is considered to be the “backbone” of Change Management. However, I would argue that your Change Management Plans are what really sits behind the success of your change initiative.
With the assistance of your Blueprint, you can build out a variety of Change Management plans to assist you in successfully driving your change by moving the impacted individuals through the ADKAR Model.
As Change Management Plans address specific ADKAR elements, you can customise your plans to accomplish the highest value change management activities. The best thing is that it allows you to add as little or as many details and activities as you want to your plans – so, customisable and scale-able to fit every project and situation.
Change Management Plans are also a fantastic way of reminding everyone that Change Management is not just communications and training, but that it needs input and effort from a variety of role players within the organisation, such as your Sponsor and People Managers for instance.
Prosci Change triangle
Lastly, but definitely not least – if you want a snapshot of where your strengths and weaknesses are, you don’t have to look any further than the Prosci Change Triangle. With one glance you can see if your organisations’ view of success is defined, what your leadership/sponsorship looks like and how the disciplines of Project Management and Change management are doing in the organisation. It helps define the reason for the change as well as the project objectives and organisational benefits.
The PCT helps you to track the overall health of your project and the assessment scores are a leading indicator of the potential for successful implementation of your project.
Once you get the 3 legs of Leadership/Sponsorship, Project Management and Change Management to work together collaboratively, the success of your project will be guaranteed.
It is recommended that you do the PCT at least 3 times during the lifespan of your project – at kick-off, go-live and then again at your outcomes date (To track this you can use your roadmap – another great functionality in Proxima) . And trust me - there is nothing more satisfying than seeing all your reds and ambers turn to green due to all your change management efforts.
I have to admit - choosing just three tools in Proxima has not been easy and took a bit of agonising over, as there are so many great functionalities available to empower you as a change practitioner.
It doesn’t matter whether you have just started out as a Change Practitioner, or if you have been a Change Practitioner since you can remember, (sometimes if feels like it is all you can remember, right?) you are sure to find something in Proxima that is going to make you DO CHANGE BETTER.
For the novice practitioner it works great to remind you what to do step by step from start to finish, and as an experienced practitioner you can choose the tools that works best for you and integrate them with some of the tools you already have available in your change management arsenal.
The best of all is that all these amazing tools are held in one central repository, available to you online. Your access to Proxima also includes access to Prosci’s Knowledge Hub as well as the Research Hub - which holds volumes of valuable research that was conducted by Prosci about topics such as Resistance Management, Communication, Change Saturation and much more.
Proxima is not just for show, but most definitely a tool to master, to integrate into your organisation’s change management arsenal and to work through step by step, to enable you to be the best Change Practitioner you can be.
Learn more and gain access to Proxima
Learn more about Proxima and the other areas of Prosci's Hub Solution Suite with our FREE webinar on the topic. Keep an eye out for a live delivery, or feel free to watch a previous session on-demand!
If you'd like to learn how to use and navigate your way through Proxima, and simultaneously become a certified Prosci change management practitioner, consider attending an upcoming Prosci Change Management Practitioner Programme.
CMC Global also offers private, single-company on-site training and advisory support worldwide. For more information on our virtual and remote options, get in touch!
