Hand holding wrench on gears

Tools

Organizational Change Management uses specific methodologies and tools to assist individuals, teams, and organizations through the transition of change. Our consultants work with you to plan, implement, and manage change focusing on three key areas:  change readiness and assessment, communication, and training.   Listed below are a few of the core tools we use during a project or initiative.

Process 

Plan

Understanding the need for change, enlisting a core change team, and developing a vision and strategy

Implement 

Creating a sense of urgency, communicating the vision, and taking action

Manage

Consolidating gains by monitoring and managing the change effort

Project Team Charter Template

This comprehensive team charter is a necessity to start your project/initiative off right by answering some key questions thoroughly. This charter will help you to:  

  • define the problem is you are addressing 
  • define the proposed solution 
  • determine exactly what will be changing 
  • determine who are the important people and their roles on the project/initiative   

In addition, you will identify: 

  • what is in scope and not 
  • what are the key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics
  • what assumptions and risks exist 
  • identify the key deliverables 

All of these questions are the keys to laying the foundation for a successful change effort. You should revisit the charter multiple times to help guide you as your change project progresses. 

Stakeholder Analysis Template 

One of the key activities to any successful project/initiative is to do a complete and thorough stakeholder analysis. This means identifying any and all of the people and groups impacted by the change brought on by this project/initiative. This tool asks you to identify these key groups and answer specific questions about the impact of the change they will sustain from the project/initiative you identified. You will rank their importance to the project based on a simple four-quadrant system to help you prioritize your areas of work with that group and the amount of communication efforts required.  While many people have heard or even completed a preliminary stakeholder analysis, most do not adequately spend the necessary time and thought on this important process. This particular tool helps you to focus in and on who is impacted and why the change matters to them. 

  

A key contributor to the overall success of a change project is the effectiveness and support of the leader or sponsor of the project, and a change manager’s ability to work and guide the sponsor through the process. This tool helps to explain the role a sponsor should play in the project/initiative. The tool helps the change manager work to set the sponsor up for success. This includes key things the sponsor should and should not do, as well as what a change manager can be doing to guide the sponsor. 

Communication Plan Template 

Communication is one of the key pillars in the Organizational Change Management methodology and a major contributor to overall project success. This template outlines the important aspects of communication strategy, what delivery methods are most effective and helps to build a comprehensive communication plan based on your stakeholders and their needs through a series of leading questions. Once completed the communication plan, aligned with the project/initiative timeline, is complete it helps provide a roadmap throughout the entire course of the project.

Reinforcing Change Template 

In order to make change stick over time, it is important to plan strategies to reinforce the change we have enacted. This template outlines the need for reinforcement strategies, the types of strategies that are typically successful and guides you to create your own plan for reinforcement change by the stakeholder group. 

Resistance Management Template

In any change project/initiative, we can safely assume there will be some resistance to the new state of being from certain stakeholders. The bigger and more impactful the change the more resistance might develop. This template helps to define what resistance is and what it might look like in a project.  Once you have an understanding of resistance, the template guides you through building a resistance management plan based on strategies you will employ if/when you meet resistance.