The Adoption and Change Management (ACM) Plan has been developed from the learnings from Prosci and the ADKAR Change Model as well as our learnings from successful change processes at Aberdeen City Council.
The plan is a key tool in the Adoption and Change Management Toolkit that helps to identify key areas – the 8 Pillars – and activities for each that when included and prepared for should ensure successful change.
The ACM Plan template will help you set out the milestones and deliverables of the change process against the 8 Pillars, which will help ensure a successful change.
The following provides an explanation of each pillar and sign posts to the types of activities, tools and resources that you may want to consider applying to satisfy that specific pillar.
Executive Sponsorship Pillar
The appointed lead stakeholder who has responsibility for creating active and visible executive engagement.
Executive sponsors create active and visible executive engagement with leaders across the organisation.
Effective engagement is about influencing how people think, feel and behave. Executive sponsorship of a change is a vital part of the process and can have a big impact on how people perceive the change.
Executive sponsorship should be carried out at the start of the change and throughout the entire process.
Links – Managing Organisational Change ? Organisational Change via Staffing Business Case- 6 Stage Process Internal Communications ? Executive Sponsorship Factsheet
Communications Pillar
Communicate the key reasons for the change and how it will impact employees.
At its simplest level, internal communication matters because it enables our employees to do their jobs more effectively, which in turn means we can deliver the best possible service to our customers, residents, partners and stakeholders.
In times of change effective internal communication is about influencing how people think, feel and behave and ensuring they feel part of the change process and see the benefits to them.
Communication should be continued through the entire change process to ensure stakeholders are kept informed at all times.
Remember the rule of 7: where possible to embed awareness you should repeat your message 7 times in 7 different ways.
Links – Internal Communications Internal Communications – our comms channels ? External communication and design
Training Pillar
Ensure people feel knowledgeable about the change and prepared for the change through any training gaps.
Adequate training can increase the success rate of a change itself and can also shape the beliefs, values, assumptions and perceptions about the implementation. This aids transparency by helping people understand the need for changes as well as the environment and culture of the organisation. It helps to foster a shared commitment to learning and evolution to achieve the desired goal.
A training needs assessment can be carried out to identify any gaps.
Link – ACC learn
Voice Pillar
People feel empowered to share their views and ideas through established reliable channels, digital and face-to-face.
A top-down approach where key messages are delivered by leaders is outdated. A culture shift is removing some of the responsibility from leaders to deliver every piece of news or change and instead amplifying the voice of colleagues.
Whilst Executive Sponsorship is vital, people don’t want to be told what to think or believe by hierarchical figures. They want to ask what it means to them as individuals and feel they can contribute to the organisation direction.
Employee voice is also the means by which people express their opinions, feedback and have meaningful input into work-related decision-making.
Ensure key stakeholders including employees and Trade Unions have a voice and can feed into the proposed change and process.
Link – Trade Union Representatives Bright Sparks on Yammer
Empowering Managers Pillar
Ensure managers are equipped to guide individuals through the change through meetings, and 121s etc.
Managers are closest to their people and know, in detail, how their business area works. They make the change real in their own business function.
Empowering managers and supervisors to guide employees through changes, reinforce and role model behaviours at a local level.
Managers need to be confident in their decisions but also know that the organisation as a whole has confidence in them.
Managers have a role throughout the change process and beyond.
Links – 3 slide deck template Organisational Change 4 Stage Process ? Empowering Managers Factsheet Leadership Forum Managing Organisational Change Leader and Manager as a Coach
Co-creation Pillar
That steps are taken to ensure key stakeholders and employees can help shape the change and design the solutions.
Co-creation in work refers to the process of having employees contribute to designing and creating things that affect them. Employees usually have a much better understanding than leaders of how things actually work, how they feel, what should be changed and what would make the organisation both more effective and a better place to work.
It’s most often relevant for things like organisational change programmes. Co-creation helps generate insight, better objectives, better solutions to problems and higher levels of engagement.
As well as leading to better solutions, co-creation also increases employee engagement and readiness for change.
Co-creation should be used wherever possible. It should be used to help identify the best solutions, create genuine engagement and to create commonality between leaders and individuals.
Links – Consultation Protocol, Trade Union Representatives
Self-managing Pillar
People are collectively designing solutions to organisation wide issues or challenges set by leadership.
Employees can work together in self-led groups and have the autonomy to collaborate on areas of the change project.
Tying in around the co-creation and empowerment work to allow for self-led groups to have autonomy and through collaborating, tie together how areas of the project are organised.
Links – digital super champs, star awards
Measurement Pillar
A check in to ensure the change impact is measured and delivers what it was designed to do.
Measuring if our changes are having the desired impact towards solving problems and achieving our business objectives. Are we having the desired impact?
Links – survey example template