An international bank with over 80,000 employees and 16 million clients worldwide recognized an increased need for organizational change management capability. The volume and pace of large-scale change drove the need for the bank to be more purposeful and more consistent at achieving a return on key strategic investments. Senior executives set a mandate to execute change in a more structured way. An Organizational Effectiveness (OE) team was commissioned to determine a plan and a strategy.

Challenge

To establish change management as a core capability within a large, complex, diverse and
global organization.

“Change can be managed in both formal and informal ways, each producing a different degree of success. Our experience, and a key driver of our success in this discipline, is the fact that we have implemented a structured and purposeful approach for managing the people risks associated with change. It enables consistency, repeatability and sustainability, all of which are important to long-term success.

— Director of Organizational Effectiveness

Solution

Partnership with Prosci

The OE team evaluated a number of leading methods to determine the appropriate methodology. The team ultimately chose to standardize the Prosci methodology based on the merits of the methodology itself and on the alignment of Prosci’s approach with their organization’s business needs.

Solution Highlights

• Define an operating model and governance for change management
• Align project and change management frameworks
• Standardize change management across the business
• Establish a change management learning curriculum

The methodology was attractive to the organization due to its pragmatic and replicable approach to managing change. The Prosci ADKAR® Model was seen as simple and effective, with a practical toolkit that enabled practitioners across the business to be somewhat self-sufficient. The Prosci 3-Phase Process provided a clear, practical path to follow in the midst of complex changes. It aligned with the bank’s existing process-based capability frameworks for program and project management.

Prosci’s approach to partnering with clients also aligned with the bank’s operating model for change. Flexibility in the configuration of the solution and global availability of Prosci network resources enabled the OE team to customize how it scaled the roll-out of standard practice to its global organizations.

Application

1. Designing the operating model

The first step the Organizational Effectiveness team took was to define an operating model to effectively scale change management across the bank’s global reach. The OE team created the following three internal groups to work in partnership:

• A corporate Center of Excellence to own the change management methodology and capability build
• A Change Management Federation, comprised of leaders and change experts across the business to drive the growth of change capability within their respective business functions
• A Community of Practice to support practitioners, to advocate for change management capabilities, and to implement change best practices

2. Aligning frameworks

In a deliberate process that spanned 18 months, the OE Center of Excellence worked to align Prosci’s change approach with the mature program framework already in place at the bank. In 2012, the group began by layering change methodology and activities next to their formal project methodology. They provided clarity about how change management fits into the structure of a project, including setting trigger points to initiate change work on large-impact projects and establishing clear ownership of specific roles and activities for change resources.

3. Building capability and competence

Through the Center of Excellence, the bank launched a robust change training curriculum that aligned with its change management operating model. The OE concurrently focused its training initiatives on building sponsorship among senior leaders and developing technical skills with those who would implement change across the Change Management Federation. Prosci trainers facilitated one-day leadership and executive sponsor programs with top leadership, and to date, the organization certified close to 500 change practitioners across the enterprise.

To build awareness and a common language across all levels of their geographically dispersed organization, the bank also customized role-specific programs tailored to managers, employees, and business partners. They utilized electronic delivery channels to efficiently reach large numbers of individuals, and they adapted the Prosci content to integrate it into existing internal training structures.

4. Engaging the community of practice

The Center of Excellence established a virtual forum for members of the change Community of Practice to connect and engage with each other. The community leveraged the bank’s internal social media platform to collaborate on change topics and share internal practices around applying change management successfully. It is popular as a one-stop shop to learn about change management and network with colleagues across the business. The community also hosts regular online and in-person webinars and learning opportunities.

5. Capitalizing on strong sponsorship

Underpinning this journey of building a federated change management practice was the impact of advocates at the highest levels of leadership. The bank’s leadership initially identified the need for a consistent approach to manage change. They commissioned the capability build and laid it out as part of the bank’s imperatives for growth and sustainability. The buy-in of C-level leaders reinforced the strategic importance of change management.

Results

This international bank’s story of an intentional change management capability build across a global enterprise has produced many of the outcomes that the OE Center of Excellence was originally commissioned to create. The organization today has a solid change management foundation and internal practice, including:

• Elevated change capability with enhanced operating model for change management
• Developed nearly 500 change practitioners and Community of Practice to drive best practices
• Achieved higher levels of employee awareness and engagement during change, boosting outcomes

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The journey to establish change management as a core capability continues to be strengthened given the dynamics and ever-changing environment within the industry.