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Level up your change management with these three key practices

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The art of change

Mastering the art of change is about helping people transition through change. It requires skills such as the ability to tell convincing stories about why change is needed, relationship building to forge partnerships that help drive change across the enterprise, and the ability to navigate the messy terrain of organizational culture.

Partnerships between KM and IT are a good example of the art of change management in action. The science of change tells us that these partnerships are critical for designing KM solutions which truly meet user needs and help drive better business outcomes. But forming and sustaining them is an art in many ways. It requires the ability to build rapport with IT through genuine curiosity and ongoing engagement and to negotiate in order to align expectations, critical thinking to solve mutual challenges and strategize together, and much more. These skills can be taught to some degree, but they also require experience, judgment, and emotional intelligence.

Key focus areas for the art and science of change

Organizations with a high level of KM maturity (as measured through our Knowledge Management Capability Assessment Tool; apqc.org/what-we-do/benchmarking/assessment-survey/knowledge-management-capability-assessment-tool) have made big strides to master both the art and science of change. In fact, 20% of these mature organizations are very or extremely effective at managing change; 48% are at least moderately effective. They achieve this by focusing on six core components of change management:

Structure and resources, including the budget and staff, methodologies, and assessment approaches that support change management core part of their change management approach.

Leadership support and sponsorship for change, ideally from a senior leader who can help drive change from the top down

Communication, which includes the approaches and tools used to explain the change to staff, collect and incorporate feedback, set expectations, and cultivate buy-in

Training in order to impart information, change behaviors, improve performance, and help employees attain new knowledge or skills

Engagement, which refers to the emotional connection employees feel toward their organization. This term also refers to the tactics that an organization uses to build trust, set behaviors, and link employees’ work to an organization’s goals and performance

Rewards and recognition, including the formal and informal incentives an organization uses to encourage specific behaviors or performance

Effectiveness at both the art and science of change increases when KM leaders make these components a core part of their change management approach.

Work to understand the complexity of change

Driving change for KM often requires people to learn and use new tools, submit themselves to new forms of gover- nance, and change the way they work with others. Helping employees and entire organizations shift in these ways requires KM teams to adopt a holistic approach that accounts for the many moving parts that need to come together for change to be effective. This includes having the right leadership support, a strategy and action plan, incentives to help motivate employees, and the other elements as shown in the Complexity of Change Graphic.  (Adapted from the Knoster Model for Managing Change.)

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