Push Organizational Change to the Front Lines
Engage managers and supervisors in organizational change management success.
- Human behavior is largely a blind spot during project planning. In IT especially, project planning tends to fixate on technology and underestimate the behavioral and cultural factors that inhibit user adoption.
- Organizational change management can help, but it needs to be properly resourced – especially for major transformations, a single change manager can’t do it all alone. To effectively reach staff on the front lines, and mitigate their concerns and uncertainty around the transition, a strong change network is required.
- Frontline managers and supervisors are best situated to comprise these networks and lead the change for their teams.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The majority of organizations fail to properly utilize their managers as change leaders. Managers and supervisors largely lack the skills, training, and tools they need to competently transition their teams through to the future state.
- Managers play a dual role in change management: they are both subject to the change and change leaders. As subjects to the change, they need to understand the change and reconcile what it means to their role before they can confidently coach and lead their teams. Statistics show that a failure to properly prepare managers for a change leads to them becoming one of the biggest sources of resistance on change initiatives.
Impact and Result
- Get managers on board with the change. Managers are both impacted by changes and they impact those changes. Before managers and supervisors can lead a change, they first need to come to terms with how change impacts them. Use the template activities in this research to help managers accept the change and lead it.
- Provide managers with the tools they need to deal with frontline resistance and communicate change progress. This research comes with a purpose-built change management tool to help frontline managers proactively think through change impacts to their teams and prepare communication and coaching plans accordingly.
- Create a symbiotic relationship between change managers and frontline managers. To reach individuals on the front lines, change management benefits from open lines of communication between change managers and people managers. The tools and templates in this research will help foster these ongoing lines of communication.
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 2-phase advisory process. You'll receive 5 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Adopt a tactical approach to employee coaching plans
- Call 1: Scoping call to determine the organization’s current state and to review Info-Tech’s Frontline Manager Coaching Plan Workbook.
- Call 2: Develop change impact analysis and communication processes using the workbook.
- Call 3: Cultivate coaching plan and training plan practices for your frontline managers using the workbook.
Guided Implementation 2: Engage managers and supervisors in the change management process
- Call 1: Design the guiding principles for a change initiative.
- Call 2: Customize Info-Tech’s Frontline Manager Change Management Training Template and prepare to communicate to managers.
IT Project Management Lite
Tailor IT Project Management Processes to Fit Your Projects
Right-Size Project Management for Infrastructure and Operations
Right-Size Your Project Risk Investment
Push Organizational Change to the Front Lines
Formalize Project Portfolio Management for Small Enterprise
Rebalance Project Intake for Small Enterprise
Introduce Program Management to Your Organization
Get Started With Project Management Excellence
Begin Your Projects With the End in Mind
Avoid Project Management Pitfalls
Build a Comprehensive Business Case
Demystify the New PMBOK Guide and PMI Certifications