Management of radical change likely to differ from the management of incremental change
It is important to also remember that a given project or initiative will impact different groups in your organization very differently. Change is not homogonous. For some in the organization, the project may only have a small impact on their day to-day work and processes. For others in the organization, however, the same project may cause tremendous disruption. Each individual has their own current state and their own future state required by the change - thus they have their own gap to bridge. Think about the following example. An organization is redesigning its expense reporting system, moving to a new, fully web-based and automated system. Now think about these four employees and how the change impacts them, either incrementally or radically. For example:
Employee 1: “I only file about one expense report a quarter.”
Employee 2: “I’m a sales person and file weekly expense reports.”
Employee 3: “I administered an old website and will administer the new website.”
Employee 4: “I am in accounting and manage the backend of all expense reporting.”
The same project - a new expense reporting system - has a very different impact on these four sample employees. The projects occurring in our organization have the same quality. They impact different groups very differently. To be an effective change manager, we must segment the different groups in our organization, understand the magnitude of impact on those groups and build our change management plans accordingly.
Key lessons for change managers:
The biggest take away for change managers is that a "one-size-fits-all" approach is not appropriate or effective for change management. We must understand the magnitude, disruption, gap and size of change to build the right approach to change management. Conduct sizing assessments - In Prosci's 3-Phase Methodology, a change characteristics assessment is completed during Phase 1 - Preparing for changeTM to help me understand the nature of the change, including how disruptive it is going to be. An understanding of the size and type of change is a necessary input for customized change management plans. Customize our approach - our change management strategy and plans should reflect whether the change is incremental or radical. The size of the disruption of the change should impact our communications plan, sponsor roadmap, coaching plans, training plans and resistance management plans. Customize and scale our approach based on the unique impact and qualities of the change. Segment groups and address them specifically and appropriately - This is the step of looking at the individual impacts that may be either radical or incremental depending on the change and the groups that are being impacted. Do not treat every group the same; adjust our approach based on how the change uniquely impacts that group. By focusing on the individual change impacts, we will build a more complete view of the change and better engage each of the groups.