The key to your success when undertaking Transformation projects is likely to be a change in human behavior. Therefore, it is crucial that you invest time, money, and resources in organizational change management activities: Sponsorship mobilization. Organizational design. Continuous change communication. Training in the needed skillset. Reinforcement of the desired behavior. The list is lengthy – and important.
How do you make sure that the needed knowledge and capabilities are available in your project team?
Ensuring the right knowledge in the project team
Earlier this year, we supported a large organizational transformation for a customer. Knowing the importance of organizational change management, we prioritized onboarding of change management knowledge in the project team from the beginning of the project.
Our change management workstream consisted of 3 primary knowledge areas
- Communication
- Training
- Organization (HR)
Communication
In order to make sure that the people of the organization understand why, when, and how they have to change, relevant, timely and precise communication is absolutely central. Having team members in your project who can introduce a set of communication channels and apply them continuously throughout the project is a great asset. Remember to keep seeking feedback from your organization, e.g. through focus groups, to make sure that the communication formats and content stay relevant.
Training
When introducing e.g. a new digital solution or way of working in your company, training employees and managers is crucial in order to enable organizational adoption. Therefore, we found a need for people in the project team who could create impact analyses, develop a training strategy, plan the training, execute the training, and follow up on the training. Depending on the size of your project, it may be relevant to train trainers in the organization to help, so the employees are trained by their peers with deep knowledge of the company, its context and processes.
Organization (HR)
Finally, we found that involving HR in the business transformation project really payed off, especially when it came to reinforcing the change that we introduced by integrating the new way of working into the structures of the organization. Not only could HR support the necessary organizational redesign, they also supported longer-term culture change, worked continuously with change in management behavior, and even adjusted the relevant performance measurements to fit the objectives of the project.
These are a few of our findings from working with business transformation projects that span over several years. If you’re embarking on such a project – or maybe in the middle of it – we hope you can find inspiration in our learnings and reflections.
