Change Management | What is Change Management | Prosci (2023)

Driving change success by preparing, equipping and supporting individuals to thrive through change.

What is Change Management? Why Change Management? Change Management Process

Change management as a discipline has evolved and matured over the past quarter of a century. Prosci research tells us that for changes to be successful, we must prepare, equip and support individuals moving through changes so that they successfully adopt the changes. Without adoption, changes will not be successful and we will not deliver the desired outcomes.

How you manage change impacts the things that matter most to your organization, including your employees, your customers and your profitability. Given that organizations are facing faster and more complex changes than ever before, the reasons for change management are only growing. But more than anything, change management prepares, equips and supports employees, so they can engage, adopt and use the change successfully.

Project management, which focuses on the technical side of change, and change management, which focuses on the people side of change, both play critical roles in change success. When using a best-practices approach to managing change such implementing a new accounting platform to streamline processes, how much can you improve the likelihood of meeting your project objectives? By a whopping 6X, according to Prosci’s research, where we’ve been surveying practitioners around the globe for more than 20 years:

The costs and risks of mismanaging change by ignoring the people side of change can be significant, impacting not just project outcomes, but timelines, budgets and more.

Prosci’s research consistently shows that organizations with excellent change management achieve greater success with change.

Building change capability

You can increase your organization’s capacity for change and better prepare for future change by building your overall change capability. We refer to this capability as enterprise change management:

Still curious about the difference change management can make in your organization?

Check out our Change Management Starter Bundle.

A framework for individual change

So the question is, how do we facilitate this individual change that leads to organizational change? Most important, we use a structured process—the ADKAR Model—to guide individuals through a particular change to ensure that they embrace and adopt the change.

A

Awareness - Of the need for change

D

Desire - To participate and support the change

K

Knowledge - Of how to change

A

Ability - To implement desired skills and behaviors

R

Reinforcement - To sustain the change

A framework for organizational change

While the ADKAR Model enables successful change at the individual level, the Prosci 3-Phase Process provides a framework for achieving change at the organizational level. This structured yet flexible process guides practitioners through performing the steps and activities needed to achieve success on a project or initiative. Practitioners apply components of the Prosci Methodology, such as the ADKAR Model and PCT Model, within the framework of the Prosci 3-Phase Process.

Here’s the basic structure of the Prosci 3-Phase Process and the goals of each phase:

Phase 1 – Prepare Approach: To position the change for success by developing a customized and scaled change management strategy with the necessary sponsorship and commitment.

Phase 2 – Manage Change: To achieve adoption and usage of the change by creating, implementing and adapting plan(s) that will move individuals and the organization through ADKAR transitions.

Phase 3 – Sustain Outcomes: To realize the value of the change by ensuring the change is adopted and the organization is committed and prepared to sustain the change.

Now that you have a basic understanding about what change management is, why it’s important, and what a proven process for applying it looks like, we have many other resources available to help you gain a deeper understanding of change management and how it can help you and your organization succeed at change. For additional details about the ADKAR Model and Prosci 3-Phase Process, see the Methodology section of our website.