Adopting a people-first approach to change management

Change is an inevitable part of being in business, but how you manage the change process will determine the impact on your people and the success of new initiatives. To fully realise the benefits of the transformations your organisation makes, you need to ensure all your people are on board. At Datacom, we  help organisations adopt human-centric change management processes to ensure successful adoption and minimal disruption.

The elements of change management that are consistent no matter the team or the organisation are: 

• Finding sponsors and leaders, and determining the high-level support needed and how to secure it.

• Getting the right people involved. Can change management be done with internal resources, or do you need external help? 

• Winning support from key people across the business. How do you plan to achieve this?

• Determining the goals you need to achieve, and which milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) will be strong indicators of success. 

Here, we outline Datacom’s approach to change management and provide actionable insights into navigating critical change.

Our methodology revolves around three core principles:

1. Design: We leverage human-centred design thinking to align people’s needs, technological possibilities and business goals. This ensures that the solutions we implement are practical, innovative and deeply integrated into your team’s workflows.
   
   
2. People: Through simple, accessible processes and templates, we enable all team members to participate in the change within a supportive environment, enabling a positive employee experience.
   
   
3. Communication: Transparency is our priority. Regular updates, timely training and open dialogue ensure every individual is prepared to embrace the upcoming changes.

Within our methodology are four key pillars of successful change. They are defining and understanding, planning, executing and communicating.

The foundation of successful change lies in defining why it’s happening and understanding its scope. This involves establishing a clear vision for the change, setting measurable objectives to track progress and identifying the impacts on your organisation and people.

It’s essential to clearly define the vision of why you're changing and what you hope to achieve by changing. Defining and understanding the change focuses a lot on you and your leadership team. It’s imperative that you define what the change is and understand the need for change so that you can lead through the steps of promoting, planning, implementing and sustaining. 

This ranges from determining the reason why you’re changing through defining key objectives to determining the benefits to the organisation. It means understanding the impact to your organisation and people, including how they do their work and what they need to do it. And, it means determining how successful change will be sustained.

The key here is that you must define and understand the change. If you don’t, it’s unlikely anyone else in your organisation will understand it, and the change you are wanting to make will likely fail. 

Every change requires a robust plan. While each team may approach implementation differently, some elements remain universal, like securing sponsorship and leadership support, identifying the resources and skills required and engaging key stakeholders to champion the change. Tools that can help in the planning phase include a business readiness plan, impact analysis, training analysis, and a stakeholder map, and communicating your plan is absolutely vital.

Planning should also consider the broader, external perspective. Focusing solely on internal tools like impact analyses can hinder the understanding of how people will experience the change. 

With a well-defined plan, execution becomes straightforward. Key steps include:

• Assigning clear roles and responsibilities. 

• Establishing success criteria with measurable milestones.

• Providing necessary training and ongoing support.

• Leveraging change agents to model and endorse the new ways of working.

Regardless of your execution strategy, there are key aspects that should be included to affect change in a positive way: 

• Everyone needs to understand what needs to happen.

• There needs to be clear, agreed-upon success criteria, measured and reported on a regular basis.  

• Stakeholder roles need to be defined and articulated.

• Training needs must be identified and put in place.

• Seek endorsements from change agents as they will help get things in place and role model the change.

• Support your people through the change and take an active and present role to ensure support is there when it is needed. 

Although it is last in this list, it’s something that should be occurring from the very start of the change process right through. Effective communication is the glue that holds your change efforts together. You can have the best intentions and the best plan in place, but without effective communication, you can easily fail in your change efforts. 

Communicate in a frequent and planned manner so your people are supported by facts and data. Equally as important, you must set the right tone for change. Always link back to your organisation’s mission, vision and values. Finally, it is imperative to manage and communicate with your stakeholders. Provide the right message at the right time to ensure continued support for your change. 

There are various structured change management models to consider when it comes to finding an approach that is appropriate for your organisation. Two of the most effective methods include:

1. ADKAR model: Focuses on awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement to ensure comprehensive adoption.
   
   
2. Kotter’s model: Offers an eight-step framework to build urgency, create a guiding coalition and institutionalise change.

Download Datacom’s guides on ADKAR and Kotter’s change management models to access these valuable resources and start driving successful change in your business.