By: Sharda Subramanian, Head, Organization Change Management Consulting, LTI.

“You’ve got 3 mins for the OCM section and remember, this is the most important part of our proposal” – I get this a lot and I mean a lot… and I have only one thing to say “really???…​

I have wondered why this topic gets the attention that it does. One of the reasons that I discovered (during one of my many conversations with my boss) is that people don’t see change management in action. They don’t see (I hate this word) deliverables of change management. While there is a lot written about change management models, methodologies, activities – most of it is perceived as “theoretical” or “Gyaan” in Hinglish. So here is my attempt to help you recognize “Change Management IN ACTION”…

Vision Workshops: “​We already have one – why do you need another workshop”​ – most of the time, the agenda is to socialize the vision within the leadership. As most of us know, but few will agree openly – the vision is often differently understood and interpreted within the leadership. This interaction, if facilitated effectively, can enable sharing of perspectives, outlook & concerns around the change. Most of the key resistance areas will get tabled and discussed; and there are opportunities to acknowledge, mitigate or plan for them. This workshop in itself can mitigate leadership level resistance – if it has the primary sponsor chairing it and leading from the front. These workshops also help identify the sponsorship roadmap for the change program.

Change Networks and User Representative Forums: Creating an internal network of champions or user representatives, enabling them with the understanding of the change, leveraging them to anticipate response & disseminate the key messages; is another commonly used change action that you might come across. This can be a double–edged sword as many times the champions themselves can be resistant to some parts of the change.

Readiness Surveys & Dipsticks: While these can have a nuisance value (especially if there are multiple changes going on in an organization), they can give a fair idea around the readiness of the impacted recipients of change. If crafted well, they can be significant indicators of adoption. While the surveys themselves are indicators, they are great tools to plan further change actions or mitigations.

Roadshows/Townhalls/Communication Campaigns: Townhall Sessions are vital for large organizational initiatives and need very high leadership involvement, but can significantly help building engagement. The Roadshows & Communication Campaigns can be created and stage managed with the help of the change champions or a smaller core group.

Steering Committee /Ex-Committee/ Core Group Meetings: While these governance meetings have a pre-meditated agenda, these can be leveraged to address personality-based conflicts, disputes resolution and coalition creation. Stakeholder engagement & alignment actions are typically steered through in these meetings.

Social Media, User Experience Simulations & Gamification: ​​The social media inherently is built for user engagement and collaborative involvement. It is hence a natural fit for change management, but the strongest feature is the interactive nature of these tools and if leveraged well, can be invaluable in change action.

A skeptic could ask, “I have seen all of the above, but the change has simply not taken effect” – and he/she could be right because, in themselves none of the above actions are effective without:

• A structured thought process & a strategy to manage change
• An understanding of the culture and context of the organization
• A constant listening, reviewing, recreating of messaging
• A leadership orientation to lead change​

Thus, the ​”Change Leader or Practitioner” has the role of an Assessor, Strategist, Facilitator & Coach ​to enable the primary change sponsor and the project team to institutionalize the change.