Build your change management proposal (continued) – Google Apps for Work User Manual
Page 15
Change Management Guide
15
Build Your Change Management Approach
Build your change management proposal (continued)
Your change management approach needs to be the right fit for the
culture and context of your organization.
Make it play to your native strengths. If you’re a franchise-driven
company, you likely have a large population of self-learners. This can lead
to a more informed allocation of, say, your training budget.
Use the information you gathered from discussions with your project
team about past changes at your company. You can also use these
questions to design your change management approach:
•
Whose support do we need to make the change successful?
Look at previous rollouts of new tools by your company and you’ll
likely identify teams that played a key role. Perhaps you engage the
Sales or Marketing teams. Or you focus on buy-in from the division
heads or support from your organization’s key business functions—
from HR to Finance.
•
Where are users located? A company with distributed offices and
geographical spread may require geographic representation on your
team, or, at the minimum, a point person charged with tracking their
user needs and responses. Also, be aware of specific language needs.
•
What type of user groups exist in the organization? Are some
people power users of calendar? Are others principally interested in
improved collaboration? What about service groups—for example,
flight attendants for an airline—whose needs differ from the
company mainstream?
Focus on the value of change management
Learning from Solarmora, a fictionalized company
Andy had learned a lot about change management.
He put together a detailed timeline and charts
outlining the change management activities. Now
was his chance to present to his project team for
support.
Oops! Andy didn’t explain the value of change
management. He showed his timeline to the project
team. Their reaction? They needed to invest time
and resources in their data migration strategy and
not in change management.
Andy realized he needed to make the case for
change management before diving into the details
of execution.
In a follow-up meeting, he focused the discussion
on the value of change management and included
specific examples of why it works.
He shared stories of other Google Apps customers,
and referenced IT projects at Solarmora affected by
lack of change management—one was delayed due
to a scramble for last-minute training and another
project was poorly received by users when IT
released it with little communication.
With this information, the team was convinced that
change management was integral to the transition
and encouraged Andy to present to the CIO.
“We realized very early on that change
management is essential. It was part of
our initiative from the very start.”
—Bernd Huber, Director Enterprise
Architecture Infrastructure,
Diversey
Diversey is a commercial cleaning company