Today’s marketplace is filled with Change Management training programs that seem very tempting as an easy solution to all of your training needs. But, buyer beware! All training options are not created equally. And a “sheep dipping” approach of training everyone as a required one-time event just doesn’t work.
Based on our 25+ years of experience with real life Change Management implementations, we recommend asking yourself, and your potential vendors the following 7 questions before purchasing any training program (no matter how pretty the marketing brochures are):
Below we’ve put together a sample training plan that simultaneously builds readiness for a specific change while also building more long-term change capability. This plan is based around our CAST of Characters and the differing roles they play during a change:
This 4-hour session is designed to give Senior Executives an awareness of how they control the pace of change in the organization and what they must do differently, based on actual data of past implementation history. Given these Executives' role as “Authorizing Sponsors” of major initiatives, it's extremely important for them to understand how their own individual and collective actions impact the success or failure of projects. Specifically, the session focuses on what Senior Execs need to do to express, model and reinforce their commitment to the current change portfolio.
Change Agents know the highest level of resistance will most likely be from mid-Managers and above, so training this audience is crucial. This 1-day session concentrates on the behaviors required from the "Reinforcing Sponsors" of your change initiative. Using the Sponsor Assessment tool, participants create specific, time-bound action plans that focus on how they can be a more effective change Sponsor on actual projects they are accountable for.
Change Agents in this 2-day session become familiar with the vocabulary and principles of the methodology, with an emphasis on the definition of the change, Sponsorship, Readiness, Communication, and Reinforcement. Participants will also receive a detailed assessment of their organization's Implementation History in order to pinpoint inhibitors and identify leverage points to accelerate implementation of actual projects they are assigned to.
Your Change Agents won’t have all the skills needed after just 2 days of awareness-building. If you want to build internal change capability, you will need a core group of internal experts you can rely on who can consult to project teams. The 4-day Accreditation is a working session that builds this level of internal capability so that you are not dependent on others for project implementation.
This 3-day workshop is a hands-on session designed to build Change Management methodology awareness in the team that is then applied real-time to the project. Participants learn the proven ten-step process that's covered in the Introduction to AIM program, plus how to use AIM assessment and planning tools to accelerate their own specific project implementation.
ChangePro is a half-day program designed to create employee readiness. The focus of the session is to provide employees with a tool box to deal with the stress of organizational change proactively and productively.
Whatever training option you select for your organization, whether it is IMA’s AIM training or another organization’s package, go in with your eyes open in terms of expectations and criteria for success. Select your training based on the outcomes you are looking for.