While this process may be organized and documented in many different ways, it should result in the following outcomes:
- Cross-functional alignment on the goals and key messages in support of the planned strategic transformation
- Understanding of the full extent of the technological or process change on all team members–both those affected directly and indirectly
- Awareness of how individuals in the organization will be impacted by the planned change and what interventions are recommended to smooth out transition
- Creation of an engaged network of impacted stakeholders who are support the transformation effort and/or eager to liaise with teammates to support them
- Design of a succinct and target change management plan informed by all of the above
If you have been tasked with conducting a Stakeholder Needs Assessment for a strategic transformation in your organization, be sure to avoid the following common mistakes:
Mistake #1: Neglecting the change landscape
System and process changes don’t happen in a vacuum. Most strategic transformations occur against a backdrop of other organizational shifts, such as team restructuring, a revised market strategy, or a new product offering. This means that those affected by your change management work stream will likely be juggling a number of different transitions all at once.
Each project has its own objectives and budgets and is unlikely to have visibility into how its participants are affected by things that are going on in the periphery–unless of course one asks. This is why we always include discussion of the change landscape as part of our stakeholder needs assessment process.
There are two reasons we want to understand the change landscape fully: 1) In order to build trust with change stakeholders through compassion and accommodation of challenging situations and 2) In order to adjust our change management strategy to appropriately minimize the effects of certain potential obstacles.
Here are some of the factors in the landscape that could affect your change management strategy:
- Changes in departmental leadership, culture
- Physical office relocation or lab changes that can inhibit productivity
- Company mergers, or other big picture activities that could provoke uncertainty about job security
- Overlapping strategic initiatives leading to change fatigue in the workforce
- Insufficient consideration of the geographic and cultural breadth of the teams affected
Recommendation: Include in your assessment a review of potential factors outside the project that could influence readiness for change among your audience. This will require interviewing subjects who might not have direct influence on or impact from the transformation but who are in a position to advise on tangential initiatives and/or have a keen handle on organizational culture.
Mistake #2: Defining the scope of assessment too narrowly
Whether the business or IT is leading the change initiative, there is typically a very specific budget assigned to readying the organization for the “new normal”. In general, these are just the direct “users” of the new system or process. However, the nature of work, especially in the drug development lifecycle, is interconnected. It is unlikely that you can draw a firm boundary around the specific user base of a system or process and say with confidence, “these are the only people who will be affected by this change.”
We live in a globalized world with an economy that rewards outsourcing specific tasks (eg. manufacturing) to the most skilled and efficient vendors and partners. This means there are almost always teams that operate upstream and downstream of a planned transformation who either need to be informed of the change, or may even need to rethink the way they are doing something in order to accommodate the new process or system.
Clients often find that our stakeholder needs assessment process unearths at least one impacted team, vendor, or partner that the project hadn’t considered previously. It can be extremely disruptive to discover at the 11th hour that an overlooked team or process needs to be brought into planning discussions in order to minimize impacts to their team. This is particularly true in a GxP environment where process deviation is an audit risk.
Recommendation: Cast as wide a net as possible when pulling together your initial evaluation and list of interviewees so that there are no surprises later on.
Mistake #3: Initiating assessment after project is already in-flight
It is a recurring theme with change management support that we are often brought in after a project has already kicked off and a launch communication is past due. Maybe there is pressure from leadership to make demonstrable progress before all the pieces are in place, or perhaps the true extent of impacts to the workforce wasn’t really appreciated until the technical work began.
Project leads are frequently asked to hurry up and announce an initiative before there’s been an opportunity to conduct a full impact assessment. As Rousseau and Have state in Organizational Dynamics, “Attending to fairness early in the change process sets the tone for what employees anticipate regarding the subsequent change.”
Rushing to assess stakeholders after a project strategy has been solidified is likely to result in one of several potential consequences:
- Key resources are left out of the assessment scope, causing disruption (and user dissatisfaction) at the time of go-live
- Initial communications have to be rescinded, either because the recipients list or messaging were inadequate
- Technical requirements need to be revisited after full scope of impacted stakeholders is realized
- Multiple communications get combined, causing confusion about the project and what people are being asked to do
- The business value of the change is not articulated to recipients in a compelling way, leading to reduced buy-in
Recommendation: It may seem tedious, but completing the Stakeholder Needs Assessment before project activities begin will likely save time in the long run, as conversations typically unearth previously unknown impacts and key strategic themes.
Mistake #4: Prescribing a rigid assessment process
With the maturation of change management as a discipline has come a swarm of certifications and methodologies that proclaim to offer a “plug-and-play” approach to what is ultimately impossible to script. When these partners promise a foolproof, guaranteed solution; be very wary. Change is deeply human and personal. And within complex, networked organizations, responses to change can be predicted about as well as the weather.
When the focus of the Stakeholder Needs Assessment becomes “completing the template” or “following the interview guide,” it is easy for teams to get distracted from the intention behind the activity. Furthermore, relying on a template that is so complicated it requires an in-depth training in order to use it, will end up limiting the analytical value of the process. Keeping the documentation as simple as possible allows us to adapt to what we are learning without disrupting the approach.
A good assessment process strikes the right balance between structured exploration and organic responsiveness to findings.There is so much to be learned “in between the lines” when we allow conversations with stakeholders to unfold in an unscripted way.
Recommendation: We advocate for organizing the Stakeholder Needs Assessment around each of the pillars of organizational readiness (operating model, training, communications, and documentation), while also building in ample time for exploring whatever unexpected learnings come up–and they always do. This serves two purposes: First, in being attentive and responsive we build trust between the program team and the stakeholders; Second, we avoid surprises later in the timeline by fully investigating the relevant challenges as they are highlighted by participants.
Mistake #5: Failing to align the change management approach with assessment findings
Under pressure to make progress, it may be tempting to take an existing change management plan from a previous project and update the dates to match the new program’s timeline and milestones. This common practice has led many projects astray. While there are universal best practices for sure, a successful change management strategy should be directly informed by the findings of the assessment.
A well-structured assessment will reveal the complexity of the changes being introduced by the planned transformation. Certain change management strategies, such as the use of a change network, are suited for a high level of change complexity. Different types of stakeholder challenges or signs of opposition to change will necessitate unique solutions that need to be accommodated in the change management plan.
Too often strategic program leaders start an assessment effort with the end in mind, having already determined what the interviewers are going to find and how they will respond. It takes effort and focus to enter these conversations with an open mind, allowing those on the receiving end of the change to be the definitive authority on what they need to be successful. This requires relinquishing some control, which can feel unnerving for leaders who have put their careers on the line to vouch for the anticipated value of a strategic change. Opening the program up to free-flowing feedback can feel risky if high rates of user adoption and satisfaction have already been promised to executive leadership (see Mistake #3).
Any time we have seen leaders resist an explorative assessment process for fear of what negativity might be introduced by the interviewees, it has backfired badly as those concerns ended up festering under the surface and erupting as full-fledged resistance further along in the project lifecycle. Consider that employee opposition to organizational change will arise for a multitude of reasons and is extremely common. Trying to pretend it doesn’t exist benefits no one. When we uncover the sources of change resistance early and respond accordingly, we have a much greater chance of reducing its impact on the strategic program’s success.
Recommendation: For optimal results, each of the assessment’s findings should map directly to an activity in the Change Management Plan meant to address or mitigate its effects.
Our Unique Formula
Kalleid has a proprietary Stakeholder Needs Assessment template that we have been honing over the past six years with more than a dozen scientific IT projects of varying scale. Our approach is nimble and flexible, our template is relevant whether your change affects a dozen people or thousands. Our consultants are skilled in the delivery of the Stakeholder Needs Assessment template, which requires expert facilitation, attention to detail, and strategic insight. After an hour with your core representatives we will assign a designation of Low, Medium, or High complexity to your change management program. This informs the strategic levers that we will recommend in order to maximize user adoption, leading to a detailed Change Impact Matrix (if needed) and finally a customized Change Management Plan.
Join our webinar- From Resistance to Resilience: The Human-Centered Approach to Change on September 24th- 8am PT/11am ET Click here to register
We’ll dive into real-world case studies from complex lab IT implementations, sharing strategies to navigate organizational transformations successfully, with a focus on the critical human element. Don’t miss this opportunity to empower your team and drive positive change in your lab.
