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Digital transformation is no longer an option. In today’s ever-evolving, technology-driven business landscape, organizations must leverage digital tools to remain competitive and relevant in their industry.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), 70% of organizations either already have a digital transformation strategy or are currently creating one. Flexera’s 2023 Tech Spend Pulse revealed that 74% of organizations name digital transformation as a top priority—up from 56% in 2021.
However, digital transformation isn’t as simple as investing in advanced tools and software. Adoption is key to successfully integrating new technologies into your organization’s day-to-day functions and processes.
The challenge is that adoption isn’t an overnight process. Most employees’ initial perception of new tools and processes is resistance because they are reluctant to change their existing work routines and habits.
So, how can organizations successfully usher in digital transformation? The answer is Adoption and Change Management or ACM.
Change Management is the discipline that manages, executes, and optimizes organisational change projects. It is a structured process encompassing how businesses handle major changes, such as adopting new technologies, redefining their organisational structure and digital transformation.
This process leads organizations through every stage of change, supporting individuals at every level of seniority and managing resistance to ensure that the workforce fully embraces and incorporates the new system into their day-today workflows.
It is important to know that change management isn’t simply about communications or training. It’s a discipline that runs in parallel to project management. While project management takes care of the technical side and delivery, change management looks after the people side. Together, these two disciplines ensure user adoption and the success of any change project, empowering organizations to reap the benefits they expect from their investment.
According to McKinsey, 70% of digital transformation projects fail to meet their planned goals. And the lack of a proper change management strategy is among the reasons behind this high failure rate.
Digital transformations may involve overhauling an organization’s entire operations. The problem is individuals cannot easily adapt to new situations and systems. Without proper management, organizations will likely hit barriers to adoption, resulting in wasted time and money.
Change management is the key to successfully implementing changes that stick.
Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking studies revealed that 88% of participants who rated their project’s change management activities as excellent, met or exceeded their objectives, while only 13% of those with poor change management met their goals.
This means that through effective change management, organizations are seven times more likely to have successful change projects, such as digital transformation.
The same research shows a strong correlation between dedicated resources and effective change management. Projects with dedicated ACM resources — such as sufficient funding, people with change management experience, a change team composed of flexible, decisive, collaborative individuals — are significantly more likely to achieve exceptional results.
One research participant put it best: “If it isn’t someone’s job, then it’s no one’s job.” To reap the total rewards of change management, there needs to be a dedicated person responsible for it, along with sufficient funding.
70% of digital transformation projects fail to meet their planned goals.
Change management helps employees seamlessly adopt new technologies and processes by addressing the following barriers to user adoption:
Employees not having enough information about an upcoming change is a huge barrier to user adoption. They must know why, how, and when the change is going to happen for them to be fully engaged and involved in the project. If they understand how the new tool or process will benefit them, they are more likely to participate and the quicker they will adapt to the change.
Employees resist change for many psychological and emotional factors, from anxiety and stress to doubt and loss of control, as well as for operational reasons such as concern it will make their roles more difficult. It’s important to understand the psychological and operational impacts of change so managers and change leaders can better support their workforce through the transition.
New technologies rolled out quickly can be difficult for employees to embrace. Workers need time to learn how to use a new tool and figure out how it will fit into their existing routines and processes. If they do not have enough time to study the technology, employees are not likely to incorporate it into their day-to-day functions.
Without adequate support, employees may struggle to understand and effectively use new technologies. Efficient communication and support channels are essential for providing timely assistance, sharing best practices, and resolving issues quickly. Lack of support can result in employees feeling isolated and reluctant to embrace new tools, leading to poor user adoption. Additionally, communications that feel irrelevant to groups of users can result in them distancing themselves from the change initiative: inclusive communication is vital.
Change fatigue is one of the top challenges leaders face when implementing organisational changes. Employees may feel they’re repeatedly instructed to change their processes and practices or embrace new tools. The constant changes might create the perception that the executive team does not have a clear idea of how they want to design their operations.
Change management should be considered from a portfolio level as well as in individual projects to help organizations address change fatigue among their workforce, enabling them to innovate for greater business success.
Lack of executive support undermines the credibility and importance of the new technology. When leaders do not actively champion and use the technology themselves, employees may perceive it as non-essential or temporary, leading to resistance or apathy. Digital transformation initiatives can falter if there is no visible and consistent support from leadership.
All organisational changes, whether big or small, benefit from a well-planned and well-executed change management strategy. Below are some of the benefits change management can bring to organizations.
Good change management keeps your employees informed about any changes that may affect them. This approach helps them feel included in the decisionmaking process rather than just being handed directives without understanding the reasons behind them. As a result, they are more eager to participate in the transition and do what is necessary for the entire organization to fully embrace the new process.
The transition from one system to another becomes smoother and more seamless when there’s a change management strategy in place. Change management enables leaders to foresee potential barriers to adoption and other conflicts, allowing them to prepare solutions to quickly address these issues.
A change management plan also lays down support and communication channels, so employees know where to go and who to ask for help when they need it.
Leaders can ease their employees’ anxiety and negative feelings about the transition through a change management strategy. When workers know all the details about a change project—why it’s necessary, how they can benefit from it, when and where the change will happen and what they need to do to prepare—they are more likely to participate in the transition process.
Additionally, when employees feel included in major changes happening in the workplace, they feel more valued and empowered in their roles, which boosts employee morale.
Ultimately, change management empowers individuals to navigate change easier, allowing them to embrace the new process or system quickly.
Change can be expensive, and a poorly managed one even more so. Delays, complications, and mishaps are likelier to happen when there’s no change management plan in place, which can lead to increased costs, missed deadlines, and wasted resources.
A well-thought-out change management plan helps avoid problems throughout the transition, enabling organizations to optimize the total costs of the change project.
The overall goal of change management is to empower organizations to embrace change seamlessly, so that their new investments may pay off.
With proper processes and support systems in place, employees can go through the transition relatively worryfree, which helps them adapt to the change faster. This allows organizations to realise the full potential of their new technologies faster, such as improved productivity and efficiency.
This is especially important when considering emerging technologies such as Copilot and Employee Experience suites like Microsoft Viva – the business value of these technologies is dependent on the extent to which users engage with the application. Unlike an operating system upgrade or tenant migration, users can choose to opt out of using the technologies entirely. A small pocket of user resistance can heavily impact ROI, and effective change management mitigates this risk.
Change management often has a reputation for being either cumbersome and complex, or flimsy and unproductive, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As long as your organization sticks to these best practices, you can have an agile but solid change management strategy.
Before introducing any new tool or process into your organization, create a plan for how you will manage this change to ensure that everyone will participate. When change management strategies are integrated early, they help prepare and align all stakeholders with the project’s goals, addressing people’s concerns and building user support. Ideally, change management and project management should be planned in parallel, with aligned reporting approaches and key activities.
This proactive approach enables you to identify possible challenges and develop targeted communication and training plans, ensuring that everyone understands the benefits and impacts of the change.
Early change management involvement makes it easier for employees to adapt and sustain the change long-term. By anticipating and addressing the human aspect of change, change leaders can reduce disruption, enhance employee engagement and increase the likelihood of project success.
Prosci’s research identifies active and visible sponsorship as the key contributor to a successful change initiative, but most organizations consider project sponsors to be executive figureheads and decision makers, rather than key drivers of effective change management.
By identifying an appropriate sponsor of the change at the outset, ensuring they understand what makes an effective sponsor, and helping them create a sponsor coalition to increase their reach while reducing the sponsorship workload, you can set your change initiative up for success from the outset.
Sponsorship visibility must be maintained throughout the project for the best results, so regular time with your sponsor, the capability to support them and objectively assess their impact on the change initiative is vital.
Each organization has its own risk tolerance, which is influenced by its culture and regulatory requirements. Your change management approach must balance project speed against your risk tolerance, making sure that you are rolling out change at a pace that is efficient but still comfortable for everyone involved.
Understanding your risk tolerance involves considering your business’s regulatory and compliance obligations. When regulations come into play, it’s not just about the risk of system downtime or the cost of addressing issues; it’s about adhering to non-negotiable rules to avoid fines and sanctions.
Your change rollout timeline must be realistic and include the approvals you’ll need to obtain, even if it means slowing down your project a little.
There is a misconception that change management is “just communications.” However, it is still true that open, effective communication is necessary to lead change successfully. Without communication, the change process can be chaotic and confusing, which can result in complications and frustrated users.
When it comes to change communication, employees see the following factors as the most important:
This means employees want consistent, honest, regular communications sent to them by their preferred sender. According to Prosci, employees prefer their supervisors to inform them of how changes will personally impact them directly.
Employees also need multiple communication channels available to them, so they know they can always receive and send messages about the change project.
Effective change management does not happen in silos. Organizations that foster open collaboration across teams and departments are more likely to enhance their change management practices.
Changes, incidents, and problems that occur in one department can affect other teams, especially as your organization becomes more complex. As such, you need communication and support networks in place to empower everyone to work together effectively.
Messaging platforms, project management boards and collaboration tools allow everyone to participate in the change project with full context of what everyone else is doing.
Different organizations will have varying levels of change management maturity. Even organizations with established change management teams may not have experience in the specific change project you’re doing and may lack the capability to appreciate the impact that small, technical nuances may have on the end, user-facing result.
Before you begin, be honest with your teams about your capability to successfully manage this change, leveraging tools like the Prosci Change Triangle (PCT) assessment where possible. This will allow you to address the question more objectively, using a research-backed framework to highlight any areas where additional support may be required.
What does this change really mean to your organization? What are the business outcomes you hope to achieve? How will this transform the day-to-day working experience of your users? What will be the impact on employee wellbeing and organisational culture?
In order to correctly frame our change management activities, you need to consider not only the operational and technological goals you’re aiming for, but also the business and people-focused outcomes you’re striving for. Without this understanding, organizations risk chasing a change that doesn’t deliver the actual results they need, making it much harder to “sell” the change to employees who need to understand what is in it for them.
After defining your target business impact, you will be able to define the metrics you will use to determine whether the change was a success. It’s likely the project management team will have their own definitions and metrics based on the “what and how” of the change. Success from a change management perspective needs to be grounded in the business outcomes you’re aiming for and whether users have embraced the new technology, not just whether it was turned on without a hitch.
This user-focused perspective is key to ensuring that you achieve the ROI your organization has set out to obtain, rather than just implementing technology for the sake of it.
User groups within your organization will be affected by the change in different ways and to different extents. It’s important to understand the magnitude of this impact before planning your change management approach and activities. If the impact on the organization is significant, this will require much more robust change management than a small change that only lightly impacts a small proportion of the organization.
It is also sensible here to look back at lessons learned from previous change initiatives and understand any trends in terms of pockets of resistance or detractors. Consider your organization’s levels of change fatigue and any external risks. These factors all have the potential to increase the level of change management involvement required in order to shepherd your organization to successful outcomes.
You should now have enough information to define the level of change management activity required to ensure you reach the desired business outcomes. You can now plan your high-level activities, levels of reporting and any key checkpoints as part of the change management work.
It’s always a good idea to align with project management as far as possible in your reporting and timelines. This will make it easier to access key stakeholders, ensure that activities are well-timed to coincide with key project management milestones, and provide a joint view of the whole initiative to the wider organization. This gives the message that your organization cares about the impact on people as much as the impact on systems.
A change manager is responsible for equipping people across the organization to participate in the change, but they cannot singlehandedly train everyone themselves! Instead, they need to equip various stakeholder groups with the right skills to play their part in the change initiative.
Messaging can come from trained communications teams, but also from the sponsor and other preferred senders. How do we ensure they know how to portray the change in a way that stays “on brand”? Line managers are vital in managing resistance and articulating how change will impact specific roles. Champion communities are incredibly powerful in demonstrating the value of new tools and applications in a way that feels relevant to the wider organization.
All these groups will need support to excel in their role, and any weak links can have a significant negative impact on the success of the initiative.
Things change throughout a project. Changes in personnel, restructurings, critical incidents and moving timelines can all impact whether your change activities are landing as needed. It’s also possible that something you thought would work fantastically to build support for a change doesn’t play out as you’d hoped, requiring you to pivot in your approach.
Unless you are tracking the success of your change management activities through regular assessments, employee pulsing and reporting, it’s difficult to build an objective picture of what is working and what isn’t. By tracking the change effectively, you give yourself the best chance of spotting problems early and adapting your approach to stay on track towards your desired outcomes.
As you come to the end of your change initiative, you should have a stack of observations, reports, assessments, and information. It’s always tempting to rush on to the next project, but taking the time to properly document your learnings from the change initiative has the potential to massively improve outcomes for the next large projects.
Capturing lessons learned is one element of this stage and is frequently done by organizations with any level of change management or project management maturity. The step that is often missed is compiling and storing these in a way that they can impact future processes. The application of the lessons is the hardest part and building a robust internal mechanism to feed these lessons into continuous improvement initiatives is incredibly important.
We’ve all put in a huge amount of work and achieved most of our objectives, so it’s time to celebrate! Doing something meaningful to recognize the key players who made this change a success is so important from a cultural perspective. It also encourages them to get involved again or pass their new-found skills on to colleagues who might want to carry the torch for that team in the next change initiative.
Small moments of gratitude can make a huge difference to the lasting impression of even the most tumultuous of projects. And, at the end of the day, change management is all about people. This is your opportunity to say thank you to those who made this change a success.
Habit forming is hard and takes a long time. Before you tie this project up in a bow and declare it “finished”, you need to plan for the future. How will you continue to capitalize on the changes you’ve kick-started in this project to keep providing benefits for our organization and its people? How are you equipped to stay ahead of any changes in the technology you just adopted? How do you encourage a culture of continuous improvement?
Reinforcing the change is essential to sustain the benefits and the outcomes you have achieved throughout the project. Make maintaining new behaviors easier than reverting to old ones. This can be done at an operational level by decommissioning old systems, or at an employee level by consistently rewarding the new behaviors we’re driving towards. Often, combining the two approaches provides the best results.
Everyone across the organization will have worked hard to get to the change outcomes you achieved. Thus, it’s so important to ensure that work is honoured by maintaining those results.
Insentra’s approach to change management is firmly rooted in Prosci’s methodology, which is based on 20 years of sector-leading research. Their ADKAR model is a simple yet powerful framework that helps individuals and organizations navigate change by focusing on five key elements: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement.
By applying this model to each stakeholder group, we can tailor our communication, training, and support strategies to address their specific needs and challenges.
However, we also recognize that change is not only a rational process, but also an emotional one. That’s why we complement the ADKAR model with more psychologically focused models,
such as the Kubler Ross Change Curve, which describes the stages of grief and acceptance that people go through when facing a major change. By understanding the emotional impact of change, we can empathise with our users and help them overcome resistance and fear.
Finally, we leverage our deep technical expertise to fill the gap between technology and the rest of the organization. We understand that technical teams, trainers, change managers and internal communications professionals often feel like they speak different languages, and we work between all these groups to ensure that nuance in the messaging and important technical specifics aren’t lost in translation.
Change is never easily received by any organization, but it is a crucial element in building resilient, innovative, remarkable businesses. You must combine clear communication, employee involvement, sufficient support, and strong leadership in order to successfully transform your organization.
However, it can be difficult to balance all these factors to properly guide your workforce throughout the transition, all while taking care of efficiency and business revenue. This is why Insentra is here to be your partner in implementing successful organisational change.
Whether you already have an internal change team ready to work on your project, or you need a team to come in and manage the entire transformation project, our Adoption and Change Management service empowers your people throughout the transition while enabling you to maximize the ROI of your technology investment.
With Insentra as your ACM partner, your organization can make waves of innovation that push you to new heights of business success. Contact us today to schedule an ACM consultation.
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