Level up your change management with these three key practices

What culture means for you

It’s critical to account for culture in your change management plans. If your culture includes the belief that every employee is a co-owner of the business, make gathering and responding to employee feedback a key part of your change management strategy. Employee feedback is still important if your organization is more of a hierarchy culture, but you may want to focus more of your attention on enlisting executives and other influential change champions to help drive change from the top down.

Change management could also involve helping shift your organization’s culture to something completely different from what it has been so far. The key lesson of culture isn’t to avoid these scenarios, but to understand relevant areas of constraint, limitation, and possible resistance to change given your culture as it exists today. Use what you know about your organization’s culture as a springboard to craft plans that are feasible and that are responsive to the specific priorities, goals, and values of the business.

The stakes of change management for you and your organization

Mastering the art and science of change can feel overwhelming—but the payoff for your organization and for you as a KM professional can be substantial. As Reinhold Niebuhr is widely quoted as saying, “Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.” Continually improving our skills for managing change and learning new ones help us, as KM practitioners, to feel prepared and confident in our ability to help others develop new behaviors and transition to a new and exciting way of working. Along the way, we often make important discoveries about ourselves and the people around us.

Of course, there is more at stake in change management than our personal growth—KM’s reputation and influence are on the line. Only 10% of our respondents today say that their organizations are very invested or extremely invested in change management for KM; nearly 20% say their organizations are not invested at all. The likelihood of this investment increasing across time has a lot to do with whether KM professionals continue to grow their change capabilities and skill sets. Doing so not only requires a diligent approach to finding and implementing best practices but also an ability to artfully navigate human behavior and organizational culture.