Change doesn’t come easily to any organisation, therefore we have put together some key steps to ensure your digital projects are successful.
When you are creating your plan to implementing a new CRM or other digital technology, you are changing the way the organisation works and individuals and teams operate, expect some internal disruption and barriers to emerge. Depending on who is driving this pushback/disruption the effects can be anywhere from negligible to a complete disaster, therefore, this needs planning.
Employees tend to live in the here and now (‘Current’ state [1]), working hard to maintain the status quo with existing processes, often built by themselves. Leaders work in the ‘Future’ state [1], planning and evolving the organisation. During a transition such as digital change, an organisation is seeking to re-engineer itself, this has the greatest potential to be disruptive and cause issues. Prosci[1] shows that change is represented by 3 clear states, Current, Transition and Future and should be planned for.
There are clear steps you can take to ensure all challenges faced during a transition are both planned for and end with a positive outcome.
- Proactive organisation engagement – this can be broken into three distinct areas, all of which are very important to the success and adoption of the planned change.
- Executive and board support and engagement – any project that means change (of any kind) across the organisation must be led from the top. Lack of executive support and active sponsorship will see an unsuccessful project. There is a clear correlation between sponsorship effectiveness and project success.
- Employee engagement – whilst leadership is critical from the top, so it’s as important to all employees down through the levels to the most junior, are included on this journey.
- Middle Management engagement – preparing middle management is critical to the success of the change program. Ensuring they have the skills and capacity to bring their teams through the change and getting them to the ‘Future’ state.
- Committed resource with a structured approach– change management can be resource hungry as it needs stamina, time and the right skills so don’t underestimate resourcing needs. Taking a structured approach provides consistent, clear direction and transparency allowing for a logical process with a common language, well-defined roles and activities that are easy to understand and follow.
- Regular and open employee communication – communication straddles everything and is the central pillar in any successful change programme. Prosci research showed the reason for the change and “what’s in it for me” being the most important communications.
- Project management inclusion – whilst change is fundamentally about people, the technical side must still be delivered. Integrating your project teams from the start is crucial to ensure project success within the time and budget.
If you only take away one thing. Organisations don’t change, individuals change one person at a time.
Chrysalis Digital provides a digital transformation service designed to help build a more agile, efficient and innovative organisation. With its broad cross-sector experience Chrysalis has helped many organisations map their digital path and through careful planning and assessment, choose the right technology partners. Chrysalis Digital is 100% agnostic when recommending CMS and CRM suppliers to its clients.
If you need any help with the next steps in your journey please call Ben Sturt on 07469 768990 or email info@chrysalisdigital.co.uk