Change Leaders, Do You Have Authority on Your Side?

Once you build awareness of the need for a change, the first element in the Prosci ADKAR Model, we move on to the Desire. But building the second element of the Prosci ADKAR Model is not always easy. I would much rather articulate the business reasons for a change or define a training strategy—that’s nowhere near as messy as figuring out how to influence someone’s desire to change. Desire is personal. It can be a vulnerable and sometimes time-consuming process. And ultimately, we can’t make anyone decide to engage with and adopt a change. We can only understand their barriers and attempt to remove them. Yet, without people making the personal choice to participate in a change, other efforts to help people transition may be futile. We have to get into the tricky business of building Desire. There are several ways to influence desire but I want to talk about one of the most effective ways to address a Desire barrier: a one-on-one coaching conversation between manager and employee. Let me tell you a story about Barrier Bob. Barrier Bob Barrier Bob is a respected senior analyst on my team who supports the ERP system. The current system was once best-in-breed but is now dated and inflexible. The company’s growth strategy includes acquisition, and the system will make integrating acquired businesses into our operations nearly impossible. Leadership has decided it’s time to evaluate a new system. Since Bob has been instrumental in developing the current system and processes, he is invited to a discussion with senior leadership about how to move forward. During the meeting, Bob verbally agrees with the new direction. He takes the action items of conducting a SWOT Analysis on the current system and reaching out to his network for recommendations. Yet, a couple of weeks after the meeting, I notice Bob has not made any progress. This is unlike him. Dragging his feet isn’t Bob’s style. The Coaching Conversation I pull Bob aside to ask what he really thinks of moving to a new system. He hesitates, then explains that he does not fully understand the need to move to a new system. The current system has served the business well, and Bob is proud of that. He also expresses worry about keeping up with the new technology and asks, “What if people stop seeing me as an expert?” Finally Bob adds, as an afterthought, that his mother’s health is failing, and he and his wife have their hands full helping her. He’s tired and the thought of this major change is overwhelming him. Clearing the Barriers Bob's explanation revealed several barriers to his desire to buy into the new direction, and we discussed each in turn: 1. Bob isn’t buying the “why” This is a crossover of lack of Awareness and Desire. I realize Bob wasn’t involved in the preceding discussions about the current system limiting company growth. I took time to discuss this with him, and we were able to identify together why the current system would make it difficult to acquire another company. This helped Bob internalize the why. 2. Bob has pride in the current state I assure Bob that his hard work over the years is not unnoticed or unappreciated. In fact, it is what led us to involve him in planning for the future. Sometimes, people need to be reassured that their work in the current state has been valuable, even if the company is moving in a different direction. 3. Bob fears he will not be as proficient or seen as an expert I assure Bob that I am confident in his ability to master a new system and commit to investing in his training, so he can continue to act as a subject matter expert in the team. 4. Bob is dealing with an unrelated personal challenge The personal challenge of his mother’s health is impacting Bob’s ability to process and buy into the change. I thank him for sharing this with me and ask if there’s anything we can do to reduce his stress and free up some emotional and mental capacity. He says working from home two days a week would help him greatly. We make the necessary arrangements to accommodate his request. Now, the reality is that coaching conversations are not always this tidy. This is meant to be an example. Also, a single coaching conversation is not always sufficient to help someone overcome their Desire barrier. Bob may need time to process what we talked about. As Bob's leader, I will need to keep an eye on the issues we’ve talked about and circle back if I see or sense him withdrawing from the process again. However, in this initial coaching conversation, I have accomplished two important things: 1) I have demonstrated that I’m willing to dig into the issues holding Bob back and 2) I now have a list of things to be mindful of as we move forward together. I know what Bob is up against, and I can keep those issues in mind as I continue to coach and communicate. Managers Are the Linchpin These kinds of conversations can only happen with the trust and mutual respect typically found in a manager-employee relationship. In change initiatives, we cannot rely on the project manager, change manager or even sponsor to have these connections. We really need people managers to be effective coaches of change. They must be skilled at having conversations that reveal the barriers to change and empowered to take action to remove those barriers. Consider how you leverage managers as coaches during change. Do your people leaders understand their role in building Desire? Do they have the tools and ability to identify and remove barriers? Building Desire is tricky business. Equip managers to coach their employees through their barriers to Desire, and you can greatly influence this requirement for individual change.

The ADKAR Blueprint is an easy-to-understand, easy-to-use starting point for change management planning. As the backbone of change management, the ADKAR Blueprint supports your ability as a change management practitioner to scale the ADKAR Model for organizational change, rightsize planning for small changes, customize planning for differently impacted groups, and more. Here’s why it’s a game changer for change. The ADKAR Blueprint Is Part of the Prosci Methodology The ADKAR Blueprint is a simple and scalable guide, oriented toward people, that enables the change practitioner to identify at a high level the milestone dates, expected gaps and initial actions required to build each of the ADKAR elements for a change. When you apply the Prosci 3-Phase Process to a change, creating an ADKAR Blueprint is the first activity in the Plan and Act stage of Phase 2 – Manage Change. ADKAR Blueprint vs. Change Management Plans The ADKAR Blueprint provides a template for capturing, in an organized and actionable way, the essential information needed to support ADKAR transitions for individuals and groups impacted by a change. For each ADKAR element, you estimate the effort required to build the element, identify the actions required, define the roles needed to complete the actions, and estimate the start and finish dates. By building an ADKAR Blueprint for your change, you focus and streamline your work to support people through their transitions, so they can successfully adopt and use the change. Although the ADKAR Blueprint can serve as a plan in some circumstances, it is not one of the full change management plans. Note the differences: 4 Ways To Use an ADKAR Blueprint An ADKAR Blueprint can be used several ways to focus and streamline your change management planning: 1. As a standalone guide for small changes An ADKAR Blueprint may be the only plan you need for a low-risk change, such as a small, incremental change impacting a change-ready group. It is also scalable. You can have 12 activities in your ADKAR Blueprint or 100 activities—make it as small or large as your change requires. 2. As a way to accommodate differently impacted groups When you have a change for which the impacts are similar across a range of groups, a single ADKAR Blueprint is probably a good starting place. But what if there’s a fairly big difference in how people are impacted? Now you can create one ADKAR Blueprint for the organization and additional ADKAR Blueprints for each impacted group. In this way, you can incrementally increase the number of activities using ADKAR Blueprints without triggering the need for full change management plans. 3. As a simplified “plan” for novice practitioners Some of the most meaningful feedback we've gotten from novice change management practitioners is that they found it difficult to know when and how to begin developing change management plans. Starting out with the five full plans we prescribed in the past was just too much because they didn’t know which plan to focus on developing first. The ADKAR Blueprint was created to provide an easy-to-understand starting point for planning the application of change management to a change. When we talked to practitioners, even before we built the ADKAR Blueprint, they often described simplified versions of change management plans they used. Some called them “ADKAR plans.” Intuitively, practitioners were already creating pared-down plans on their own to get started. So, the ADKAR Blueprint is an innovation based on what members of our practitioner community were already doing. We've simply acknowledged that and built it into the enhanced Prosci Methodology. 4. As the foundation and guide for full change management plans The Prosci Methodology puts the individual at the center of successful change. If your change requires more than an ADKAR Blueprint, using the ADKAR Blueprint as your foundation ensures that all change management plans you create are rooted in supporting individuals to achieve their ADKAR transitions. The Prosci Methodology describes Core and Extend plans you can use on your change. The four recommended Core plans are the Sponsor Plan, People Manager Plan, Communications Plan and Training Plan. Extend Plans are the potential additional plans you can apply to your change, such as a Resistance Management Plan or a Change Agent Network Plan. Using the ADKAR Blueprint, you can map all the required actions to the five ADKAR elements. Start by brainstorming all the actions required to build Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. To move from the ADKAR Blueprint to a more specific plan, go back through the actions and tag them. Some actions might belong in a Communication Plan. Some of the actions need to be completed by your sponsor and belong in a Sponsor Plan. In some cases, an action might belong in two plans. This is the mental process you go through to determine whether you need a more robust plan. In some cases, you might take a single action and expand it. For example, your Awareness action might expand into six or seven different actions in your Communication Plan. So, it's a way to get clearer, more detailed and refined. Keep in mind that using Core and Extend Plans will result in the need for multiple plans, potentially four or more. But by starting your planning with the ADKAR Blueprint, you will be well positioned to decide which plans your change requires to ensure successful outcomes. You can also use the ADKAR Blueprint as a way to summarize the required actions for an organization or group with a low tolerance for detailed plans (e.g., senior executives). ADKAR Blueprint Offers a Quick Start and Quick Win The ADKAR Model has always resonated with people because it is people focused, intuitive and effective. We all know that organizational outcomes are the collective result of individual change. Managing change by starting with the ADKAR Blueprint requires us to focus on what is needed to achieve a successful change one person at a time. The ADKAR Blueprint offers real-word flexibility, especially when we don’t need or want all the change management plans. And people love that it offers a quick start and the potential for a quick win. It really is a game changer for change.