How to build your change management plan in seven simple steps

“Change management is a fickle beast, so anything you can do to grease the skids and deliver digestible chunks of information is important.”

Chris Knapik, Senior Director of Process Transformation, PepsiCo

A change management plan is a step-by-step success path for any organizational change initiative. It defines the scope and goals of the change, as well as project roles, and includes details on communication workflows and training programs.

Change management plans aren’t static documents to be set in stone before the project starts. They should be flexible, dynamic plans that can adapt to unforeseen issues, while being used to ensure projects stay within agreed timelines and budgets.

One of the key roles of the change management plan is to align expectations with accountability throughout the project. As Kerry Brown, Celonis Customer Transformation Advisor, explains:

“Managing change is really a balance of expectations and accountability. From the CEO down to the individual contributor, where do you fit in? What decisions do you make? What resources do you make available? What training do you take? What actions do you personally shift? If there’s a match in terms of what’s going to happen to me, when it’s going to happen, and accountability and an understanding of where to plug in, people are able to navigate through it as well as possible.”

Find out more about mastering successful change in our on-demand session, Pioneering Sustainable Change: Start it, See it, Sustain it.

Here are seven simple steps to building out a successful change management plan that will ensure you stay on track throughout the change management process.

Step one: Define the scope of the change

The section of your change management plan that sets out the scope of the change project is often called a statement of work, or SOW. It’s a way to set boundaries on the change initiative. It defines precisely the deliverables you will be working towards and – sometimes more importantly – what falls outside the scope of the project.

Defining the scope of the change helps to set smart goals (goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). It requires change leaders to liaise with key stakeholder groups impacted by the change to make sure they are aligned. Scope setting in change management plans helps to manage stakeholder expectations, get their buy-in, and ensure they understand the boundaries of the proposed change.

It also helps to:

• Improve resource planning
• Manage change resistance
• Prevent scope creep
• Reduce project management risks

Step two: Create an implementation timeline

Creating a timeline within your change management plan means listing all the tasks that need to be completed to get the project over the line, in the chronological order in which they need to occur, and mapping any interdependencies between them. To craft a realistic timeline, with built in flexibility, you’ll need to calculate how long each task will take, and allow a little extra for inevitable delays, especially when one task can’t be started until another is completed.

You can then plan and sequence each task to create a project roadmap. This should include key dates such as project kick off, progress meetings, training courses, systems testing dates, and any hard deadlines – like company events by which the change must be fully embedded.

A successful change implementation timeline shows how all the pieces of your plan fit together and allows all employees to see what should be happening at any point in the project. It provides a clear, visual representation of the project’s flow that allows for easy tracking and updates. You can create a timeline using a change management tool like Microsoft Project, which can easily be updated and adapted as the implementation progresses.

Step three: Set goals and objectives

An effective change management plan will need to include two distinct types of goal. The first is strategic objectives, the outcomes the change project aims to achieve. The second is change management KPIs or milestones that assess the progress of the project to ensure it stays on track.

Strategic objectives for change

Most change projects are designed to achieve outcomes that align with broader business strategy, whether that’s increasing revenues, cutting costs, or boosting workforce productivity. Change management plans should set a current-state baseline for these measures, ultimate targets, and milestones that can be reviewed along the way.

As the change is implemented, progress against these targets should be reviewed often, and with a consistent cadence. According to our Celosphere 2023 Changemaker Panel, a drawn-out change process that’s reviewed often has a greater chance at success than a shorter process that’s reviewed less often. Our panelists also agreed that using positive early results to build support for later changes can be highly effective.

Change management KPIs

Your change management plan should also set out how you’re going to measure the progress of the project. You can choose to use change management KPIs such as change adoption rates, training course completions and stakeholder engagement levels to gauge project success.

Alternatively you can align milestones with a change management model such as the ADKAR model, which moves stakeholders through the following stages:

• A wareness of the need for change
• D esire to participate and support the change
• K nowledge of how to change
• A bility to implement desired skills and behaviors
• R einforcement to sustain the change

Step four: Appoint a change management team

The fourth stage of building your change management plan will be to appoint a change management team. Who will oversee the task of implementing the change? Who needs to sign off at each critical stage? Who will be responsible for ensuring individual tasks are completed within the established timeframe?

There will be three categories of people on your change team:

• A change leader, also known as a change manager or project manager, is an individual whose role is to drive the change project forward and keep it on track.
• A change recipient is an employee whose role or behavior will need to adapt as the change initiative is implemented.
• A change enabler is a team member that establishes and maintains conditions for the change to take place.

Remember that timeline you put together in step two? Now you have a change management team, you can allocate responsibility for each task on the timeline to one of your team members.

Step five: Include communication workflows

Setting out a communication plan to prescribe the flow of information throughout the change project is a vital part of the change management plan. You will want to consider:

• Which communication channels to use for outbound communication
• What frequency gives enough detail without becoming white noise
• How to encourage, receive and action feedback from stakeholders
• How to personalize communications to address individual concerns

Early and effective communication to explain the rationale behind change initiatives is essential to foster a deeper understanding and buy-in among employees and stakeholders. Regular communication of project success, when milestones are achieved, can also keep the project moving. But overall, open and transparent two-way communication with employees is most effective for maintaining engagement, especially for longer-term organizational change projects like digital transformation.

Step six: Outline a training plan

Laying out a training plan will be key to the success of any change initiative. The type of training required will be different depending on the nature of the change – whether you’re planning a system migration, for example, or a major organizational transformation – but it’s likely some training will be required to increase knowledge or develop the necessary skills.

Today, there are multiple options for excellent, online, on-demand training courses that stakeholders can complete in their own time. But be aware that not everyone has the bandwidth for self-guided learning, and online learning portals may need to be supplemented with live classroom training sessions.

Gamification can be used to increase employee engagement with both on-demand and in-person training, as Skoda discovered when it used a game focused on new use cases and competition to drive change in its procurement process. Assessments should also form part of the change management plan. Just because an employee has completed the training that doesn’t mean they have retained all the necessary knowledge.

Discover the training courses, certification exams, and in-classroom learning currently available in the Celonis Academy.

Step seven: Define a risk management strategy

However well planned your change project is, it can fail to deliver on its objectives due to a variety of risk factors. These could include a lack of buy-in from employees or senior management, inadequate resources, or the onset of change fatigue.

Use the following process to create a risk management strategy for your change management plan:

1. Identify the critical success factors (CSFs) that are vital for the change initiative to achieve its objectives.
2. Pinpoint the potential barriers that could get in the way of these CSFs – these are your change management risks.
3. Use an assessment matrix to ascertain the probability and consequence of each risk, and classify each as a low, medium, high, or critical risk.
4. Prioritize your change management risks based on the above classification.
5. Brainstorm, identify and implement appropriate mitigation strategies for each risk.
6. Regularly assess risks throughout the change project to see if new ones emerge or if existing risks become more or less prominent.