Speaker 1: Do you need to approach change management for the first time and do not know how to handle it? Well, do not fret, because in this video, I'm going to share with you all about change management and how to implement it in your project successfully. All right, change management, why is it so important? Why do you even need it? I know you're here because you've been asked to do change management and you want to know how to implement it, but let's just all get on the same page regarding the definition of change management, because that's really important from a change management perspective. All right, so what exactly is change management? Change management is a discipline that guides how we prepare, equip, and support people to successfully adopt change in order to drive organizational project success and outcomes. The bottom line is you need a change management plan no matter what for all types of projects. Projects institute some form of change, and there's usually an end user who is going to receive that change. And so this is something that now ought to be incorporated into your project management plan, a change management plan as well. Okay, a little bit of a side note. I know we're talking about change management, but generally we want to talk about project success as well. So I have for you at the end of this video a checklist on six key things you need to have to make sure your projects are successful, so stay tuned because I'm going to share with you how you can get your hands on that a little bit later. The first thing you want to do is prepare for the change. This is critical. You have to have an understanding as to what is changing, why is everything changing, and how you want to see this change outcome come together. You also have to take a look at all the stakeholders who are being impacted by the change, and you want to do a stakeholder analysis around how this change is going to be impacting them because you may have to put together a different approach per stakeholder. So this preparation is all the groundwork you're doing, really an understanding as to what it is that is going to change, how you want to see it changed, and as well as the stakeholders who are going to be impacted by it. Step two now is planning and managing the change. So this is where you formalize documentation around what is it that you're going to do and the management of those. So what are some of those change management documents that you need that are really part of your change management plan? Think of this as the bare minimum that you should be looking at to really be successful. The first one is a communication plan. How are you going to communicate with all your stakeholders? Remember, in your preparation, you already did your analysis. So now that you've done that, every stakeholder group is going to be different. Not everyone is treated equally. There are going to be some individuals, based on what your project is delivering, that from their perspective, they may be what's called a super user and really need detailed communication because when your project is done, their job is completely impacted. So you have to be lockstep with them so they understand how they're being impacted. Other individuals may just need to have an awareness of it. So just keep them in the loop with the project status so they know that, ah, six months, that's coming down the pike. Again, that communication plan is going to be really vital to ensure that adoption of your new ideas for the individuals who are going to be receiving it. Another plan that's part of your change management plan from a documentation perspective is your training plan. And just like the communication plan, not all training plans are created equal on purpose. You're going to want to have very specific, in-depth, in-classroom training, train-the-trainer training for those who are using it all the time, whatever it is that you're creating. You may want to just have some knowledge-based articles for individuals who just need to have awareness. You may just want to have information on a site. It's going to be dependent upon what you're needing to do, but that training plan is going to be important because the last thing you want to do, which unfortunately happens a lot and way too often than it should, when time is tight, training gets kicked out. You cannot do that from a change management perspective. Your change management plan must talk about training and how are you going to do that. You have to lay that out. Another thing you want to consider is events and activity plans within your change management plan. So what do I mean by that? For your stakeholders throughout the process, you may want to have some events to kind of keep in the loop, maybe a lunch and learn so that they're excited with what's going on. You may want to have an official go-live launch. So again, bringing people together through an event. It's going to be up to you. You can also have what I've done in the past. We had fun poster campaigns to kind of teach people through communication and events where it linked to them having like a scavenger hunt, which led to some really cool new things that they were going to get from a feature perspective. And it was a real fun way to bring everyone together on this project when they got really excited about this new particular development that we were doing. And the last bare minimum is a reinforcement plan. This is all part of your change management plan. How do you plan on reinforcing this change? Because unless this change is mistake proof to a point where no one can do it other than the way that it was developed, then some people may fall back on old ways of working or may circumvent what it is that you created. So you need a reinforcement plan. How are you going to reinforce this change and observe it and make sure that it is working well? Okay, what I just thrown out to you is a lot. Don't feel overwhelmed. If you need a little bit of help, it's all good. I have you covered. I actually have a video on my YouTube channel. Just go to the search bar, Adriana Gerdler communication plan, which actually talks in a little more detail of the communication plan portion. But if you want more information on the rest, I actually have in my S.L.A.Y. project management course, the link is underneath this video, a complete section dedicated to change management with all the templates, which is pretty cool. So you may want to consider that to help you in this process too. Now we want to look at sustaining the change. We did talk about all those plans and about monitoring and making sure that those are working well. But once everything has been implemented and the change has been adopted, how are you going to sustain that? We've all been recipients of a project deliverable where everything was exciting and everyone adopted it, and then all of a sudden old ways of working were kind of taken back up and the new way of working didn't actually move forward the way it intended. Why? Because as creatures of habit, humans need to have that habit develop. So this is where that sustainment becomes really important. You want to do evaluations with individuals who are using the new process, the new tool, whatever it is that your project delivered that you created your change management plan around. You also want to do some surveys to get feedback as to what's going on. You may also want to do some audits of the area to see how well adoption is occurring. The key though is to really get clear feedback. Engage with your stakeholder. Let them know we want to engage some feedback from you so we can even get better. This is your opportunity for continuous improvement at this point too. Just because you created something in your project doesn't necessarily mean it was created perfectly. There's probably room for improvement, particularly now that it's out in the real world, really being worked with ways of working and scenarios that maybe you just didn't know when you were developing it. So this sustainment becomes really important because you want to grow and ensure that it gets adopted into everyone's ways of working. Now that you know how to start a good change management plan, oh, I'm excited for you, it's going to make a huge difference in your projects. This is something else you need to now get and the link is underneath this video. You need to ensure your projects don't struggle. You want to make sure they're successful. And this is free for you, my gift to you. So go grab it. It is so worth it. It's just going to help enhance the change management plan that you're going to put together. If you like this video, give it a like. It helps us grow our community and this YouTube channel. I appreciate it so much. Not only that, I have another video for you to check out. So definitely it's only going to help you. So please do it. And on that note, I'll see you at the next video.