According to statistics, around 70% of change management projects fail to achieve their goals, primarily because of management support issues and employee resistance. It only shows that quality strongly affects the results of a project. Hence, having excellent management techniques will give you a high chance to attain your benchmarks.
The key to effective organizational change management in AI projects lies in the 3Cs—communication, capability, and connection & culture. These three must be in place to make the employees understand the role of AI and not be wary of them. Also, it increases the success rate of intelligent automation.
The traditional change management applied until now needs improvement. The emergence of digital change tools helped in the transformation of outdated management techniques. Learn more about the key to effective change management, how it works, and the benefits it brings to your organization by reading further.
What Is Change Management?
Change management refers to the manners and methods that a company implements in its internal and external processes, including establishing the necessary steps for the change, preparation, support for the employee, and pre-monitoring and post-change activities that will ensure the success of the change implementation.
Most of the time, companies fail to implement change because the process is challenging, involves several levels of cooperation, and includes various independent entities within the organization. Hence, developing a structured approach to change is critical in ensuring a beneficial transition as disruption happens.
In addition, the change fails due to human reasons. The promoters of change fail to notice the natural and predictable reactions of people affected by the change. It is essential to clarify that its purpose was not to eliminate them but instead to make them more productive. Failure to do so will hasten the collapse of the plan.
The 3Cs in Effective Organizational Change Management
Intelligent automation (IA) has always been part of change management. It uses automation technologies such as RPA, AI, and BPM in streamlining and scaling up decision-making across organizations. More than that, it simplifies processes and frees up resources as it improves the business’s operational efficiencies.
IA is freeing up low-value manual processes to enable employees to do more high-volume tasks. Consequently, it reduces costs through workforce augmentations and improved productivity. Included in the benefits too are the enhanced accuracy and quality due to consistent processes, approaches, and revamped customer experience.
For businesses to enjoy these benefits of IA, they must have effective organizational change management. The key to having that lies in the 3Cs— communication, capability, connection & culture.
Communication
The most common mistake organizations make is not establishing spot-on and personable communication. They fail to put themselves in the shoes of their employees, not providing the context of the change that is about to happen. Thus, resulting in worried employees about their ejection from the company.
The first key for effective change management is communication. The changes should be communicated to the employees and followed by a business goals review to adjust performance objectives and ensure that the change will be in the correct direction financially, strategically, and ethically.
Knowing who gets affected at various organizational levels and the impact are also important. You need to review the effects on each business unit and how it will affect the entire organization. In this regard, the gathered information here will start to form the blueprint for training and support to mitigate the impacts.
It is essential to define the changes that will happen and their necessity to your employees. Giving context and identifying the impacts will highlight those who you should communicate the change, so you must decide on the most effective communication medium for the group that will bring them on board.
The communication strategy should include key messages, channels, mediums, a timeline for the change, and feedback management.
Capability
The second key that every business undergoing change management should consider is capability. AI is not a switch that you can turn on and makes everything work perfectly. People involved should interact with the technology because the more you do, the more it learns about work, behavior, and trends.
The capability has to be there to leverage all the benefits from AI. Take, for example, when you were learning how to bike. The moment you ride it, you cannot run it on your own smoothly. You learned biking through the training wheels that eventually enabled you to bike independently on two wheels.
Before interacting with AI, your employees will need the skills to use it. You need to show them how to adapt general instructions to their specific behavior. Note that it takes time before these changes get embedded.
According to a specialist in adult learning, adults learn best in a four-stage cycle— listening to instructions, absorbing information over time, applying and integrating existing knowledge. Similarly, AI technologies would need to gain knowledge from their users.
Connection and Culture
Connection and culture to the change is a big stretch for companies, especially to the conservative ones. That is why its position has to be against the context of the industry backdrop. A support structure must also exist to assist employees to practically and emotionally adjust to change.
In addition, they can build the proficiency of behaviors and technical skills required to achieve the organizational goals with the said structure. There should be mentorship or an open-door policy with the management so they can ask questions. It will help them to adapt and check the performance of the role.
Lastly, an assessment structure must be in place to measure the business impact of the changes. Ensure, too, that continued reinforcement opportunities exist to build the needed proficiencies. Regularly evaluating the change management plan will also help in gauging its effectiveness and documenting lessons learned.
Conclusion
Typically, people fear change, so they must understand its context and process. Neglecting these steps in organizational change management may cause the plan to fail. Consider the 3Cs— communication, capability, connection, and culture if you want it to succeed.
Written by Thomas "Ai Nerd" Helfich + #Instarel
