successful transformation, business results achieved, culture transformed, people engaged

Change Methodology and Tools

The probability of leading transformation successfully increases exponentially when you have a proven change methodology guiding you. That methodology should provide a clear roadmap, one that guides you through planning, design, and implementation—all the way to your desired results. It should navigate the organizational/technical changes as well as take care of all of the people/cultural issues required to succeed.

The Change Leader's Roadmap

The Change Leader's Roadmap provides the strategic guidance you need to design a successful change process. It also includes tools for every task in your change process, so you not only know what to do, but how to do it. Clients tell us that it contains the most comprehensive array of change tools available.

The Change Leader’s Roadmap is a navigation system that helps you guide the actions in your change effort over time. It is used as a “thinking discipline,” a planning tool for making conscious decisions—not a lock-step project management tool. It is extremely comprehensive and lists most everything you will need to succeed in your change. It is structured to guide your thinking and application from the most conceptual strategy level down to the most pragmatic, operational level.

The Change Leader’s Roadmap Methodology is an online resource available through a 12 month subscription. To learn more about the subscription options or to take advantage of a free 30-day trial, click here.

Benefits of Using The Change Leader’s Roadmap to Navigate Your Change

Increased results from your change efforts
Greater speed to full achievement of your desired ROI
Reduced capital and human costs from change
Improved change capability, knowledge, and skill
Reduced negative impact on operations as your organization goes through change
Significantly improved stakeholder commitment and engagement
Sustained culture change as desired to support increased business outcomes
Increased confidence from knowing how to proceed in your change effort
Dramatically improved ability to manage capacity across operational priorities and your organization’s change agenda
Improved governance of change, including better and faster decision-making

Three Results in One

Achieving tangible business outcomes from change—transforming culture, and building organizational change capability—are often seen as separate pursuits, but the actions required to achieve all three are an integral part of the CLR. In other words, you can use the CLR to transform your culture and build your organization’s change capability WHILE you achieve maximum results from your current change effort(s).

Guidance for All Kinds of Change

Most organizational change is strategy implementation. When your business strategy requires shifts in your structure, systems, processes, technology, or culture in order to produce the results it specifies, your leaders initiate change efforts to drives those shifts. No matter what kind of change your business strategy catalyzes, the CLR will guide you through it. You can use the CLR to plan, design, and implement change solutions for any “content” of change, including technology implementations such as ERP and CRM, re-structuring, process reengineering, systems changes, job redesign, culture change, or mergers and acquisitions.

Designed for Today's Transformational Changes

There are three distinct types of change occurring in organizations today: (1) developmental, (2) transitional, and (3) transformational. While the Methodology supports all three types of change, it is specifically designed for today’s complex transformational changes. In fact, the more challenging your change effort, the more value you will receive from using the Methodology.

A True Process Methodology

The CLR is a true process methodology—not a simple change framework. Change process methodologies guide action across time. They help you decide which change tasks are critical, the order in which to take them, and how to execute them for optimal results. They enable you to consciously design your change process so that each task flows into the next, building momentum toward your desired outcomes. The Change Leader’s Roadmap is based on a nine-phase change process model. Three phases are devoted to up-front planning and setting the foundations for success, three are devoted to design, and three to implementation. All successful organizational change progresses through these nine phases of planning, design, and implementation. We use nine phases rather than a simpler three phase model because it enables you, as a change leader, to better manage the critical tasks of change.

The CLR is a “fullstream” process model. It guides you through the entire lifecycle of your change process, from the moment of conception through design and implementation to the complete integration of your desired future state into your current operations.

Change Leadership, Not Change Management

Change management typically provides support in four areas: overcoming employee resistance, communications, training, and implementation planning. While each of these is important, they do not provide all that is needed to succeed in transformational change.

The CLR goes beyond change management and is a comprehensive change leadership model that provides far more insight, guidance, and resources than do typical change management approaches. Key tasks attended to during the first three, upfront phases of setting the foundations include:

Clarifying change roles and governance, including the interface between operational leaders and change leaders
Building the case for your change
Conducting an initial impact analysis and identifying the scope of your change
Clarifying the initial desired outcomes
Assessing your organization’s change readiness and capacity
Developing your change leaders’ awareness, knowledge, behaviors, and skills
Building a comprehensive change strategy
Creating a robust stakeholder engagement strategy and communications plan
Developing your change infrastructure, including change structures, systems, policies, and technologies
Establishing conditions for success
Transforming culture through how you do change in your organization

The CLR also attends to key design and implementation tasks, such as:

Determining the design of your future state
Doing an impact analysis of your future state on your current operations so you can identify what you need to address before you implement, thus averting tremendous conflict and accelerating implementation
Identifying resolutions to your impacts
Creating your Implementation Master Plan
Identifying how you need to support people through implementation
Integrating your desired state into current operations to gain full ROI from your change
Establishing your people’s ownership of the new state so they take on continuously improving it
Building best change practices

The Structure of the Roadmap

The CLR is structured for ease of use. Each of its nine phases is comprised of between one and six activities, each of which is further broken down into between one and twelve tasks. There is as much detail in the CLR as you might need.

The work of the CLR gets done at the task level. Phases and activities are organizing constructs that make understanding the change process easier. Organizing by phases and activities also makes the tasks and their resources easier to find.

The resources that guide the execution of each task are found within the task they primarily support. Resources for each task include: (1) work steps, (2) process questions, (3) potential problems, (4) info sheets, (5) tools, which include worksheets to execute the tool, and (6) articles that are pertinent to the task. Hot links to individual resources can be found throughout the CLR wherever they are relevant.

All of the resources are written as stand-alone pieces. Sometimes, you will want to apply work steps and worksheets within a tool, just as they are written. At other times, however, you will want to tailor how you execute work steps and/or worksheets to either make the work more fitting to your circumstances, or to streamline implementation of the task to reduce consumption of operational resources.

Not everyone using the CLR Methodology will use all of the resources provided. Project managers tend to like the work steps because they give the most direct guidance about what steps are needed to complete a task. Consultants (organization development, organization effectiveness, change management, etc.) often prefer the process questions because they provide high level guidance while triggering insights that allow them to figure out their own way of getting a task done. Executives like the potential problems because they help them assess risk and prevent problems.

All users of the CLR appreciate the info sheets, tools, and articles. The info sheets provide knowledge required to complete a task. The tools offer the most pragmatic guidance, providing the worksheets, checklists, assessments, templates, and strategic questions to design and implement a task. The articles provide information and guidance about specific change topics.

Users of the Change Leader's Roadmap Methodology

The CLR Methodology supports three primary audiences: (1) change leaders, including change process leaders, project managers, and project team members overseeing the planning and execution of actual change efforts, (2) change consultants who assist line management in designing effective change strategy and process plans, including experts in change management, organization, development, project management, quality, learning, and human resource development, and (3) change agents, including human resource professionals, mid-managers, and frontline staff supporting positive change.

Access the CLR Methodology Today

The Change Leader’s Roadmap Methodology is an online resource available with a 12 month subscription. To learn more about the subscription options or to take advantage of a free 30-day trial, click here.

To review the other products in The Change Leader’s Roadmap family of tools, see also: The Change Leader’s Roadmap Overview, The Change Leader’s Roadmap Checklist, and the Nine-Phase Model Video.

Subscribe to Being First's monthly newsletter "Results from Change"

You'll get free change resources and we'll keep you posted on upcoming events and other tips and tricks to keep you on the cutting edge of change leadership.
Click for sample

Change Leader's Roadmap version 5 Coming Soon!
Enhancements include improved navigation and new project planning tools designed to maximize workflow efficiency. Register now for product launch special pricing.

The Change Leader's Roadmap Overview

The Change Leader's Roadmap Checklist

Presentation of the Nine-Phase Change Leader’s Roadmap Model