Getting More From Your Change Management Project

Lots of people are involved in change management projects at this time of rapid change in our world. There are a variety of approaches to change management. All of them will benefit from this one simple additional component. Your people need to learn to thrive in change in their private and in their work lives. What better way to help them develop the skills, knowledge, and capacity to thrive in change than to use your upcoming or existing change project to do so?

You are already investing time and money to accomplish the desired outcomes of your change project. With minimal additional resources, you could be using your change project as a shared experience of the people from which they can learn about change, and how to thrive in change. If you believe in the benefits of developing your people, this would be one of the most important investments in your people’s development that you could make.

Action/Reflection Learning for Change Management

Basically, you would be making use of one of the best ways that adults learn…through action/reflection. Participating in your change process according to the plan is the action, so it is already happening with the time and money allocated to the change process. The component that needs to be invested in is the ‘reflection’ part of the action/reflection learning. Here are some simple steps to get started.

Reflective Learning

1. Look at your change management plan and identify different stages set out in the plan.
2. Schedule a learning circle time of about two hours at the end of every stage for every business unit involved. Communicate that these learning circles are for the purpose of learning the skills and knowledge for thriving in change. The people being invited need to be informed that this in itself is an important development topic.
3. Devote the learning circle time to the business of sharing what is learned about participating in a change process. Whoever is leading the learning circle time needs to know some type of facilitation method that encourages maximum participation and sharing…and can keep people on the subject of what is being learned about participating in change.
4. A simple way to go about sharing the learning is to ask these questions, giving people time to share
   • What surprised you about the change process?
   • What disappointed you about the change process?
   • What delighted you about the change process?
   • What skills did you discover that you had to manage to get through the change required so far?
   • What do you now know about navigating through change?

Your people will benefit by learning what it takes to thrive in change, skills and knowledge equally adaptable to private and work life.

Your organization will benefit by having a great resource to draw from for future change projects….people better equipped to thrive in change.

_{Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash}