At a glance
Planning and Communicating Change
Pragmatic approaches to planning and communicating change in an organisation
Change is happening more rapidly in most organisations than ever before. But how much of this change leads to real improvement and how much simply gets lost among the noise of other changes?
In the past, project teams often assumed that if the solution they were providing was an improvement over what previously existed, then users would see the benefit of the solution and rapidly adopt it.
But this approach has sometimes fallen short and the expectations placed on project teams are changing. Teams are increasingly being asked to plan and manage the successful adoption of their solution rather than simply walking away once their solution is deployed into production.
Similarly, experts in different fields are looking to implement new methodologies and standards but often struggle to have their message heard.
In each of these cases, those dealing with change encounter internal politics, user resistance, management apathy and even confusion about what is expected of stakeholders during and after the project.
This course provides participants with pragmatic tools and approaches to anticipate and manage the complexities involved with implementing change in the modern workplace.
The key topics covered include:
- Planning for effective communication to support a project or other initiative.
- Performing a change readiness assessment prior to implementing change.
- Approaches to better understanding and managing the constraints and enablers of change in a particular organisation or group.
Intended For
- Managers and others introducing change into an organisation.
- Project leaders, senior BA's and others responsible for managing communication during a project.
- Change managers responsible for planning organisational change.
- Trainers, implementation managers and process analysts responsible for ensuring an operational team successfully adopts a new system or process.
- Project office leaders, quality assurance experts and others looking to deploy a new approach or methodology.
Prerequisites
There are no specific prerequisites for this course.Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Create a clear goal for change or communication initiatives
- Create a basic communications strategy
- Clarify and focus a core message so that it is relevant to different stakeholder groups
- Perform a change readiness assessment on a group
- Identify the obstacles that will hinder the successful implementation of change
- Leverage the enablers and manage the constraints that exist when initiating change
- Build a plan for both initiating change and for rolling out communications
- Understand the impact of internal politics on the management of change
- Discuss approaches to measuring the progress and impact of change.
Content
Day 1
| Morning | Defining effective change and communication |
| Creating a simple communication plan | |
| Conducting the initial scoping interview | |
| Afternoon | Assessing a group's readiness for change |
| Models for understanding the impact and potential for success of a new initiative |
Day 2
| Morning | Clear communication in a complex world |
| Measuring change, communication and other intangibles | |
| Afternoon | Feedback and response strategies |
| Implementation planning | |
| Bringing it all together |
Method Used
The course consists of four modules, each of which focuses on a different capability area.
Each module begins with a brief introduction to some of the theory associated with the capability area and then an explanation of some pragmatic tools and techniques that can be applied to the real world.
Participants are expected to discuss the theory and compare it to their own experience in the real world.
Participants will apply what they are learning to a detailed case study which will allow them to both practice their skills and to see the link between the different areas as their knowledge of the case study grows through each module.
For in-house courses the case study can be replaced with a real world example, in which case the participants will need to apply the new techniques to a real project.
