I’ve been doing a lot of organizational change management (OCM) work recently. This is especially timely with all the change that has been forced on organizations over the last two years. Formal OCM helps organizations tackle three areas that must mesh together for successful change – effective sponsorship, good technical project management techniques, and the people side of change.
I have not found one completely satisfactory OCM framework, so I’ve pulled together some of the best bits from Prosci, John P. Kotter, Change Acceleration Process, Human Systems Dynamics, and others. Here’s one small insight from this vast body of work. It is a mashup of various perspectives on the role of the management sponsor of a change. It goes by the acronym ABC+ER.
An effective sponsor must:
A – actively and visibly participate throughout the project
B – build a coalition of sponsorship with peers and managers
C – communicate directly with managers and employees
E – create environment of trust, psychological safety, and learning
R – provide essential resources
Take away any of these, and it doesn’t work. Some sponsors intuitively know to do all five things, but don’t count on it – many don’t even know that they are in the role of a sponsor or what that entails.
Are you interested in organizational change management ideas? My toolkit is brimming with new insights, so if enough people are interested, I’ll share more bits in future posts.