What is needed to ensure people have all the tools they need to successfully adopt the change? Different changes require different degrees of operational support in order to sustain them. But all change management plans should include a continuous improvement feedback loop, to give your organization the means to provide feedback on how well the change is taking hold, and suggestions how to make it better.How to make the change operational:
- Establish the Continuous improvement feedback process (required)
- Who will own monitoring the process for feedback?
- Who will govern and ultimately make the decision if a change is needed to the people, process, service, and/or technology solutions?
- How often will updates be made? Monthly? Quarterly?
- What will happen if there is an emergency break / fix needed?
- What will happen if a feedback change is denied? Who will communicate the denial and reasoning?
- Who will implement the change(s)?
- How will the updates be communicated to the practitioners?
- Create templates and samples
- What tools must be created to show people the job-specific changes they must make to ensure the change becomes operational? This is a perfect question to be answered by your communities of practice!
- Who will create the templates and samples?
- How often will the templates and samples be revised?
- How will the updates be communicated to the practitioners?
- Develop job aids
- What job aids, training materials, and/or guideline documentation is needed to help people change their behavior? This is another perfect question to be answered by your communities of practice!
- Who will create the job aids?
- How often will the job aids be revised?
- How will the updates be communicated to the practitioners?
- Align the change with other processes in the organization
- What related processes or other active process changes must your change tie into to make to ensure the change becomes operational? This is a key question to be answered by your Integrator, through working with all of your stakeholders!
- We have often found that once a corporation decides to make a change, there are often multiple, simultaneous changes going on at the same time; for example, implementing business analysis techniques while also implementing project management best practices. Because business analysts need to work collaboratively with project managers to ensure the successful definition and delivery of a project, the 2 change champions (and change managers) need to be aware of each others' goals, timelines, and key deliverables. This is also an opportunity to leverage each others' communication plans, since some of the same people will be impacted by the related changes.
- Govern the change
- At the beginning, we mentioned that you will create a change team to ensure successful implementation of your change throughout your organization. Once the change is operational, external Subject Matter Experts and Change Agents will roll off the project; at this point, an owner needs to be identified who will ultimately ensure the change lasts. Remember, based on the type and degree of change, it may take years before the change is fully assimilated into all of your processes.
- How will the operational owner monitor the people, process, service, and technology operations for progress?
- How will this owner know what decisions will need to be made to refine the change, while not losing ground on change progress (or giving in to remaining resistors)? What specific training will the owner need to ensure they have enough information to not approve feedback changes that would lose ground?
- Will this owner be empowered to deny requests for refining the change? What additional support (or sponsorship) will they need if people are unhappy with their decisions?