Accelerating Change Capability With a Strategic Alignment Workshop

We receive inquiries every day from organizations looking to build enterprise-wide change capability. Their concern is not just for the impact of current changes but the ability over time to become a change-capable organization. The good news is we can help. Prosci's  research-based models, tools and facilitated services enable clients to build vibrant change management ability across their organizations. Through training and expert support, your organization can define what change capability looks like, plan a change capability deployment, and gain momentum as you make change capability a reality.

Building Change Capability

To gain the knowledge and tools to build an effective change capability deployment at your organization, you can follow a do-it-yourself approach, get expert support, or opt for a hybrid of the two.

If you want to kick-start the process, the Enterprise Change Management (ECM) Boot Camp is a one-day session that shares the research, fundamentals, models and tools for building an organization-wide change management capability on your own.

If you want to involve your organization's leadership team in the training or want more hands-on support from Prosci, our Strategic Alignment Workshop is a facilitated event at your organization in which our Advisory Services team helps you craft a clear direction for your change capability, align resources into goals and objectives, and establish a timeline for executing the change capability strategy.

When to accelerate change capability deployment

Our Strategic Alignment Workshop brings the experience and expertise to facilitate the accelerated development of a change capability deployment plan. Accelerating the planning and execution of a change capability deployment is critical in two instances: 1) in environments that have substantial organizational complexity, or 2) in organizations that require rapid and effective change as a strategic imperative and a competitive distinction.

Whether you are looking for an accelerated deployment or not, change capability must always begin with an articulation of what change capability will look like in your organization and a strategy map to ensure the deployment is successful.

Articulation: the first step toward capability

Building an enterprise-wide change management capability is the critical enabling force in an organization’s adaptability and agility. To help clients in developing this capability, we begin by setting a clear and compelling direction for their change capability. This means envisioning the future of change capability in the organization and envisioning how the organization is positively impacted by the capability.

In a recent planning session, we helped one client set a very high bar for themselves by articulating that their change capability will be “a competitive and strategic distinction that fuels company performance.” That bold statement required a plan to become a reality.

Strategy map for
organizational change capability

Once the trajectory is set, clients partition resources into goals and objectives that will move them toward the capability they need. We measure their current change management maturity, help them establish a benchmark, and set goals in five strategic areas. Our strategy map is based on foundational research into building enterprise-wide change management ability.

Prosci's ECM Strategy Map includes five categories:

• Leadership – How leaders engage in change
• Project– How change management is added to existing and future projects
• Skill– How people within the organization attain role-based skills needed for change management
• Structure – How change management is structured to ensure successful dissemination
• Process – How change management integrates with project management and other processes 

Ask and Answer Hard Questions

Warning: engaging in a Strategic Alignment Workshop with Prosci will create challenging conversations. One of the best qualities of change management as a discipline is its ability to ask hard questions. Two particularly challenging topics arise in every one of our planning sessions:

1. Who will do all this work?

There is no easy answer to the challenge of resourcing change management on projects or providing resources to implement the change capability strategy. Every organization we work with has limits to the time, money, people and mindshare it can dedicate to change management. It is this limitation that makes planning so critical. Without the vibrant conversations about resource allocation, organizations often fail to prioritize resources toward their most valuable and important changes. The Strategic Alignment Workshop provides a forum that helps organizations begin developing rigor of prioritization.

2. How many changes can we successfully implement?

Building a plan for organization-wide change management will highlight that your organization likely has more changes launched than it can successfully implement. Once again, we don’t have any magic in dealing with change saturation. We do, however, have the framework that can help clients prioritize changes to assure the most important and highly valued changes receive the attention they need.

Keeping Momentum During Deployment

Like all strategic efforts, the real challenge is not in setting direction and aligning resources but in executing the plan. Prosci’s ongoing support as your organization’s deployment progresses will:

• Help make plan adjustments
• Hold leaders accountable
• Encourage progress toward building this essential strategic distinction

How to Get Started

If you and your organization are ready to create a strategic, competitive distinction and tackle the resource and saturation challenges you face, then accelerating your change management deployment through our Strategic Alignment Workshop is an option worth reviewing. You can schedule a call to discuss your change management deployment here.