Level up your change management with these three key practices

Organizations today are dealing with an overabundance of change, driven by both internal priorities and external disruption. As KM professionals, we have an opportunity to step into the spotlight as a key partner in change—but doing so requires continual investment in growing and building our change management capabilities.

KM’s involvement in change varies from one organization to another. Through a recent survey (apqc.org/resource-library/resource-listing/bridging-gap-exploring-change-management-practices-km-region) of KM professionals, the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) found that 23% of respondents don’t manage change at all within their organizations. Further, only 12% said that their current change management practices are very effective or extremely effective in helping to drive successful KM initiatives.

What marks the difference between KM teams that are highly engaged and effective at the work of change management and those that are not? We’ve found that the most effective KM teams are attentive to both the art and the science of change. This dual focus enables leading KM teams to grapple with the complexity of change and carry out change in ways that make sense for their organization’s culture.

This article discusses key insights from our change management research to highlight strategies that can help you do the following:

♦ Master the art and science of change

♦ Understand the complexity of change

♦ Shape change management plans with your organization’s culture in mind

The ability to leverage both the science and the art of change is key to growing KM’s influence and the value that KM drives for organizations.

The science of change

Mastering the science of change means having a structured approach for change management that includes plans to manage communications, identify and track measures of success, provide training for employees, and more. Through decades of KM research, we’ve discovered approaches and practices in these areas that leading organizations use repeatedly because they drive greater success and effectiveness at making change.

Measures of success for change management are a case in point. Choosing the right measures is critical, not only for tracking progress for KM change, but also for driving ongoing support from leaders.

We’ve also found that aligning measures of success with priorities that leaders care about—such as time savings or revenue gains from employees who use KM— helps to provide compelling evidence that KM knows how to drive the kind of change that adds real value to an organization.

Tying KM outcomes to almost any business outcome KPI boosts the likelihood that KM will demonstrate significant business value. For example, two-thirds of KM programs that explicitly measure increased revenue as a result of KM initiatives demonstrate enormous or a lot of business value, compared to 44% of organizations that do not use these measures.

Top Five Employee Engagement Methods