Drive Adoption and Sustain Transformational Change

Analyst perspective

The pace of change has never been faster, and the urgency to embrace change has never been more crucial.

While the speed, frequency, and interdependence of changes increase, so too does the rate of change failure. The missing piece of the puzzle is about people: their expectations, emotions, behaviors, culture, habits, beliefs, and resistance. Technological evolution continues to accelerate, but the on-time, on-budget execution of projects won't drive value if customers and users are not willing, able, or committed to adopting these projects' outcomes.

Addressing the people side of the change equation will look different for every organization and will probably be different for various groups within the same organization. Effective organizational change management (OCM) is not about adopting every best practice found; instead, it's about assessing and right-sizing OCM efforts according to people's needs.

Investing in supporting people during change should be as important as investing in the latest technologies – only then will we be able to realize and sustain the value we want and expect.

Laura Herran Sanchez
Research Specialist, Special Projects
Info-Tech Research Group

Drive Adoption and Value From Organizational Change

Champion OCM and leave nothing behind.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Executive summary

Your challenge

The next generation of technologies requires:

• Acknowledgement from organizations that they need to undergo fast and effective change to remain relevant.
• An ability to sustainably accelerate to keep pace with the increased frequency of change.
• Confidence in IT to reliably execute these changes.
• Unfortunately, change efforts remain more likely to be unsuccessful than successful.

Common obstacles

Some of the major factors preventing organizations from achieving value from new technologies include the following:

• Projects are staffed but change management is not, resulting in limited accountability for solution adoption and value realization.
• Change management activities are introduced too late, the impact of the change is not fully understood, and negative effects are not mitigated.
• Value delivery is delayed, which can lead to intended outcomes getting lost and even defunding.

Info-Tech's approach

Effective organizational change management (OCM) can help you achieve and sustain intended value and benefits by:

• Ensuring that OCM is actively considered from the beginning through to the end of a project.
• Breaking change up into digestible components to make it manageable.
• Planning for the unexpected.
• Taking the time upfront to be planful about a sustainment strategy.

Info-Tech Insight

OCM is not about creating a communications plan just before go-live. It's about making sure every change delivers value by driving user adoption and ensuring solutions are appropriate and understood.

Your challenge

All IT leaders and organizations are at risk of falling behind if they do not embrace emerging technologies fast enough.

• Today's landscape is constantly evolving, making it necessary for organizations to adopt organizational changes faster and more frequently.
• Transformation efforts require enormous financial investments and time, but the return on that investment is rarely defined and realized.
• Organizational strategies are often driven and enabled through technologies, resulting in a high dependence on IT to ensure success.
• IT leaders and organizations must cope with various change initiatives happening simultaneously that vie for the same resources.
• Completed projects aren't necessarily successful projects. Most fall short of stated objectives and expected value is often not achieved or sustained long term.
• Failing to achieve the desired results can erode IT's relationship with other parts of the organization.

85% of organizations agree that embracing new technologies will drive transformation in their organization.
Source: World Economic Forum, 2023

"51% of technology executives have not seen an increase in performance or profitability from digital transformation investments."
Source: KPMG, 2023

Common obstacles

The following obstacles make technology adoption and value realization difficult to achieve for many organizations:

IT leaders and business leaders are not aligned before, during, or after transformation initiatives.

Transformation and change are terms often used interchangeably, resulting in the false belief that both are happening when they're not.

People believe that they can transform the organization simply by implementing technologies, deprioritizing or overlooking the critical human aspects.

Organizational change is perceived as a project with an end date instead of as an ongoing practice, so it is rarely sustained, and the anticipated post-project value is not realized.

Last-minute approaches to OCM are always ineffective and inauthentic.

While stated belief in OCM concepts is virtually ubiquitous, the reality is that the adoption of OCM practices is near zero.

One reason for high failure rates is that most leaders focus on the processes – the hard skills and tools needed to create the desired result – and they underestimate the challenges related to the people.
– David A. Shore, Faculty, Harvard University

47% of employees believe alignment issues have been preventing projects from meeting objectives.
Source: Lucid, 2023

Info-Tech's approach

By implementing effective OCM, your organization can drive adoption and value.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. OCM starts at the point of idea origin and supports people throughout the process to ensure engagement and commitment.
2. Take the time upfront to be planful about your change and sustainment strategy.
3. Assess readiness and all vested interests to create a customized, relevant, and detailed action plan to effectively address change.
4. Consider the emotional, behavioral, and cultural factors that foster resistance and inhibit adoption.
5. Break change up into digestible components to make it manageable.

Organizational change is not just beneficial – it's crucial

Changes are happening faster and more frequently. Inability to actively adopt change will lead organizations to failure.

• Dealing with sudden changes and unexpected disruption is the new norm. Organizations need to be able to pivot and quickly adapt if they want to survive.
• 56% of senior executives that have seen an increase in the number of change projects have seen an increase greater than 25%, while an additional 25% have seen an increase greater than 50% (Harvard Business Review, 2023).
• Changes are not only driven by crisis but also by emerging technologies, changing needs or expectations of interest groups, fierce competition, anticipated opportunities, and other internal and external forces.
• Organizations in the modern world need to do more than react to change drivers. They should actively anticipate and embrace them to stay relevant and generate value.

85% of senior executives have seen an increase in the number of change projects.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2023

85% of CIOs believe their role is shifting to that of a changemaker.
Source: Foundry, 2023

With the rapid increase of change, OCM can no longer be overlooked or misunderstood

• OCM addresses the people side of change.
• OCM manages change that requires replanning and reorganizing of things people are already doing, causing them to feel like they have lost control over aspects of their jobs (Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2017).
• OCM is a framework for managing the introduction of new processes and technologies to ensure adoption by those affected.
• OCM can help improve outcomes on any project where you need people to adopt new tools and procedures, comply with new policies, learn new skills and behaviors, or understand and support new processes.
• OCM involves tools, templates, and processes to help project leaders analyze the impacts of a change, engage impacted groups/individuals, and train users on new technologies and processes.
• OCM is a separate body of knowledge, but as a practice it is inseparable from both project management and business analysis.