5 Reasons to Employ Top-Down Change Management

Time to Read: 3 Min

Prosci, a recognized authority in Change Management, defines project-based Organizational Change Management as the application of a structured process and a set of tools for leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome. This approach improves outcomes and return on investment (ROI) on projects by enabling impacted individuals to move through their individual transitions, allowing them to adopt and use project solutions effectively in their day-to-day work.

However, when it comes to Enterprise Change Management, the paradigm shifts. Enterprise Change Management goes beyond project-specific applications. It focuses on delivering strategic intent, mitigating change saturation, and improving agility by embedding Change Management into the very fabric of the organization. This entails building Change Management competencies across the entire organization, in addition to ensuring effective Change Management for all projects and changes within the organization.

Generally, Enterprise Change Management encompasses three key elements:

A Common Set of Processes and Tools for Managing Change: This involves the consistent application of a structured process and a standardized set of tools for managing the people side of change across all changes occurring within the organization. It's the deliberate and repetitive practice of Change Management.

A Leadership Competency at All Levels: While the first element pertains to projects, the second focuses on the people within your organization. Leadership competency means that all leaders, managers, and supervisors in the organization internalize their role and responsibility for leading change. Achieving this requires training, coaching, and on-the-job support.

A Strategic Capability for Adaptation: This capability enables the organization to be flexible, change-ready, and responsive to marketplace changes. It is an outcome of the first two elements. When an organization consistently applies Change Management to numerous projects and equips individuals with the necessary expectations and skillsets, it can confidently claim "change-ready" as one of its core competencies.

In addition to these elements, moving from a project-only approach to Enterprise Change Management is its own an endeavor for the organization.

There is no magic wand or silver bullet to help an organization become competent at managing change. When your organization becomes serious about building this core competency, you must also shift your perspective about Change Management, which involves viewing and treating it differently as follows:

As a Project: Like any project, the effort to build the Change Management competency requires planning, design, and implementation work. To be successful, you need a structured approach to managing the project, along with the resources and plans for implementing your competency-building project.

As a Change: For many in your organization, building Enterprise Change Management requires new behaviors, activities, and skillsets. Managing the human component of this will be crucial to your effort's success. This includes communication, sponsorship, and the other tools for managing human reactions to your competency-building effort.

As a Top-down Effort: Enterprise Change Management must be driven from the top of the organization. In every Prosci Best Practices in Change Management study, active and visible sponsorship from senior leaders is the number one contributor to success. Building the organizational competency to manage change is no different. You must have a primary sponsor, a strong sponsor coalition, and communication directly from senior leaders about the need for managing change as an organizational competency.

Now that you have a holistic understanding of Change Management and its various dimensions, continue to read our business case for Enterprise Change Management or our article titled Top-down Change Management Approach for ERP Implementations.