How many times has Prosci Europe heard “we’ve got a huge Transformation Programme – I know we’ve got to practice change management but where do I start?” 

This is a common roadblock that many change managers face when building change capability in an organisation. Deploying change management across an organisation is no easy task because building competencies in change management forces an organisation to evolve how it handles change, not only at the individual level but also as part of a culture change which disrupts long embedded processes and beliefs. However, there are some key strategies you can employ to ease your organisation into the process and achieve successful change.   

Our advice early in the process is to think both tactically AND be strategic in your approach. What does this mean? To explain that, lets break down these approaches: 

Thinking Tactically: Apply great change management practices to the current projects in your portfolio to support the delivery of more successful change now. Leverage the resources you already have – use the findings of the Best Practices Research, the Prosci tools and templates for your planning and implementation. Actively demonstrate and celebrate the positive impact of good change management activity. Identify colleagues who are supportive of change management network and collaborate.  In doing so, you will be identifying some of the advocates and champions for building support for your longer-term enterprise approach …. 

 Download: Best Practices in Prosci Research 12th Edition  

Thinking Strategically: Be prepared to deliver the enterprise wide activities over a longer term – your Enterprise Change Management (ECM) Project may take 3-5 years to deliver, and this strategy will need to be owned and sustained in the organisation. Understand it will take time to develop the required support.  From our experience you will get best traction for ECM with support at senior level and from your network. Look for support from your change sponsor – you will know from the change initiatives you and your team are delivering who are your great sponsors. You may have one, or several or many…    

The two tracks of activity are wholly complementary - the first defines actively managing and applying change management to your organisations current change projects (shorter term), and the second provides structure and intent to the development of designing and embedding change management into the DNA of your organisation (short, medium and longer-term activities and tactics).  Integrating these activities will support the development of change capability by building consistency and integrating common tools and frameworks into ‘the way we do change in our organisation'.  

Committing to an ECM project can bring multiple benefits to your organisation

To prepare for the ECM Project, to apply structure and intent to your plans, you need to consider – Where are you now? Where do you want to go? And how you want to get there? Attending the Enterprise Change Management Bootcamp will provide you with a structured approach with proven tools to support defining where you are, where you want to get and then how you plan to implement the initiative.   

The ECM framework will provide an approach for the technical side of the changes needed to build ECM; you can see an example of the outline Prosci ECM Strategy Map below.  

The people side of the ECM project delivery will aim to: 

• Engage your employees in change management to ensure that the approach is embraced, adopted and used 
• demonstrate why change management is needed on your projects, what is at risk if change is not managed, and why this capability is critical right now 
• Show the organisational and individual benefits of becoming more adept at change 

Next Steps:  

• Get in touch and book a meeting to discuss your objectives and explore how our team can support you with the ECM planning. 
• Plan for a Prosci Europe led Strategic Alignment Workshop where you and your core change team work together to focus on the value and vision of change management, measuring your organisations current change maturity, defining roles and creating a customised plan for building change capability in your organisation.  
• Join us on the ECM Bootcamp to learn how to plan for your own ECM initiative. 

At Prosci Europe we have been helping our clients with building change capability over many years, so if you would like to know more about how to go about it, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.