Push Organizational Change to the Front Lines
Engage managers and supervisors in organizational change management success.
- Human behavior is largely a blind spot during project planning. In IT especially, project planning tends to fixate on technology and underestimate the behavioral and cultural factors that inhibit user adoption.
- Organizational change management can help, but it needs to be properly resourced – especially for major transformations, a single change manager can’t do it all alone. To effectively reach staff on the front lines, and mitigate their concerns and uncertainty around the transition, a strong change network is required.
- Frontline managers and supervisors are best situated to comprise these networks and lead the change for their teams.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The majority of organizations fail to properly utilize their managers as change leaders. Managers and supervisors largely lack the skills, training, and tools they need to competently transition their teams through to the future state.
- Managers play a dual role in change management: they are both subject to the change and change leaders. As subjects to the change, they need to understand the change and reconcile what it means to their role before they can confidently coach and lead their teams. Statistics show that a failure to properly prepare managers for a change leads to them becoming one of the biggest sources of resistance on change initiatives.
Impact and Result
- Get managers on board with the change. Managers are both impacted by changes and they impact those changes. Before managers and supervisors can lead a change, they first need to come to terms with how change impacts them. Use the template activities in this research to help managers accept the change and lead it.
- Provide managers with the tools they need to deal with frontline resistance and communicate change progress. This research comes with a purpose-built change management tool to help frontline managers proactively think through change impacts to their teams and prepare communication and coaching plans accordingly.
- Create a symbiotic relationship between change managers and frontline managers. To reach individuals on the front lines, change management benefits from open lines of communication between change managers and people managers. The tools and templates in this research will help foster these ongoing lines of communication.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
South African Reserve Bank
Guided Implementation
10/10
$3,718
55
The analyst is very experinced in the TOPIC and she shared valuable tools to address my challenge
Saskatchewan Blue Cross
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
3
Best - Immediate solution, Thanks Travis Worst - N/A
Workshop: Push Organizational Change to the Front Lines
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Assess OCM Capabilities
The Purpose
Assess the current state of organizational change management (OCM) and establish a realistic target state.
Key Benefits Achieved
Realistic and well-informed workshop goals.
Activities
Outputs
Introductions and workshop expectations activity
- Realistic workshop goals and expectations
OCM SWOT Analysis
- OCM SWOT Analysis
Assess pain points and analyze root causes
- Root cause analysis
Module 2: Analyze Impact of the Change
The Purpose
Develop a methodology for analyzing change impacts on specific stakeholders early in project planning.
Key Benefits Achieved
A more informed approach to project and change management planning that takes into account specific change impacts on individuals.
Activities
Outputs
Analyze the impact of the change across multiple dimensions and team members
- Impact analysis
Create an impact management plan
- Impact management plan
Develop stakeholder-specific communication plans
- Message canvas and communication plan
Module 3: Develop Employee Coaching Plans
The Purpose
Develop a framework for frontline managers to better transition their teams through change.
Key Benefits Achieved
Better prepared frontline managers and happier frontline staff.
Activities
Outputs
Review change reaction model
- Change reaction personas
Design situational awareness activities for frontline employees
- Methods for building change awareness and knowledge
Document change engagement activities
- Tactics for building frontline desire to accept the change
Design a process to monitor change adoption
- Approaches and metrics to reinforce the change and ensure its adoption
Module 4: Prepare Employee Training Plans
The Purpose
Analyze and document the training needs of staff to support future state roles.
Key Benefits Achieved
- A skills and knowledge gap analysis
- Better prepared staff to transition to the future state
Activities
Outputs
Map out future state activities for team roles
- Training Plan Requirements
Assess skills and knowledge requirements and analyze gaps
- Training Management Plan Tool
Module 5: Prepare Frontline Managers
The Purpose
Review communication best practices and tactics for dealing with emotional responses to change.
Key Benefits Achieved
Frontline managers who are better equipped to deal with the emotional side of change.
Activities
Outputs
Communication best practices
- Guiding principles for the change
Dealing with emotional responses to change
- Resistance management plan
Role playing activity
- Insights generated from role playing activity
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
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Get the help you need in this 2-phase advisory process. You'll receive 5 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Adopt a tactical approach to employee coaching plans
- Call 1: Scoping call to determine the organization’s current state and to review Info-Tech’s Frontline Manager Coaching Plan Workbook.
- Call 2: Develop change impact analysis and communication processes using the workbook.
- Call 3: Cultivate coaching plan and training plan practices for your frontline managers using the workbook.
Guided Implementation 2: Engage managers and supervisors in the change management process
- Call 1: Design the guiding principles for a change initiative.
- Call 2: Customize Info-Tech’s Frontline Manager Change Management Training Template and prepare to communicate to managers.
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