Today's post comes to us from Workforce Institute board member and HR Bartender, Sharlyn Lauby.

As much as organizations and individuals want to return to “normal”, there are probably going to be aspects of business that change for a very long time, if not forever. That might not be terrible. There are some good outcomes emerging from this unprecedented time.

But we've all seen the statistics that more than 70% of change efforts fail. Part of the reason is because organizations don't do a good job of managing the change process.

At last year's KronosWorks conference, Melanie Berg, senior user adoption consultant at Kronos, showed us how to use the ADKAR Model as a framework to achieve individual change. But I could see it being a framework for organizational change as well. ADKAR is an acronym that represents each step in the process.

  1. AWARENESS. Of course, this is the acknowledgement that change needs to take place. What I think is important about this first step is understanding what change needs to take place and how much we feel that we can handle at one time. It could make more sense to do a series of smaller changes - even though that will involve more time and resources - because it means the change will be successful.

2. DESIRE. Organizations need to identify the “why” and be able to clearly articulate it to stakeholders. This includes customers, employees, vendors, candidates, etc. In addition to being able to discuss the need for change, organizations should proactively address any possible topics of resistance. The goal in this step is to let stakeholders know what's in it for them (aka WIIFM).

3. KNOWLEDGE. Organizations will want to identify all of the changes that will need to happen. Change management efforts often involve new policies, procedures, processes, systems, tools, roles, responsibilities, tasks, attitudes, beliefs, and even compensation. Companies can use the RACI model to help with accountability. While adjustments can always be made after implementation, the more that can be addressed upfront, the better.

4. ABILITY. This is where the change goes into effect. All of the planning and communication are tested. And that's okay. The change effort should be able to hold up to scrutiny. Throughout the change, every level of the organization should be regularly communicating what they're seeing and how they are feeling about the progress. Not everyone manages change at the same pace and internal stakeholders should be prepared to support each other.

5. REINFORCEMENT. Ultimately, this step is about realizing the benefits of the change effort. It's about stakeholders experiencing the WIIFM from step two (DESIRE). To effectively sustain the change, organizations want to regularly discuss their execution and regularly debrief to learn: 1) What's going well? And 2) What can we do differently? This allows the organization to refine the change effort and look for signs of success.

Models like ADKAR can help individuals manage professional change. They can guide managers and project leaders through new ways of doing business. And they can help organizations grow through processes like digital transformation. Giving all employees a roadmap for change and teaching them how to use it will benefit the individual and the organization.

Today's post is submitted by Joyce Maroney, Executive Director of the Workforce Institute. Here, she discusses how Kronos' successful transition to a cloud company serves as a great primer on organizational transformation for beginners.

My employer, Kronos Inc., was recently recognized as a Best Workplace for Innovators by Fast Company. While this award focused on a major technological achievement, it took far more than just an engineering investment to deliver this transformation. Founded in 1977, Kronos became a market leader in workforce management software over the next 30 years. By the early 2000's, though, software-as-a-service was rapidly gaining favor with customers. After more than 35 years in business selling on-premise software, Kronos found itself needing to take the leap into the cloud while continuing to leapfrog its competitors.

Making this kind of big change is not without its perils. Long time employees were nervous about their jobs. In the early years, not all customers bought into a cloud vision. Our entire customer service and support model had to be changed. Every process in the company, from sales to billing had to evolve to handle the new model. After years of making do internally, enormous investments in tech to enable our own employees had to be made.

And we did it. With great effort, focus and discipline. From creating a skunkworks engineering team to creating completely new organizations within the company, every aspect of our business was transformed.

We've received so many requests for interviews, tours, and recipes for how we achieved this transformation, that we've created a set of resources to answer those questions. If you are looking for guidance on how to plan and execute a major organizational transformation, these assets are a great place to start.

Photo Credit Rowan Walrath/Bostinno

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram