prosci-change-management

Prosci Change Management

Business / By / June 21, 2022

According to Prosci founder Jeff Hiatt, the secret to successful change “lies beyond the visible and busy activities that surround change. Successful change, at its core, is rooted in something much simpler: how to facilitate change with one person.”

Understanding Prosci change management

Prosci change management is a framework for organizational change that focuses on one individual at a time.

Prosci is a company that partners with organizations to deliver change management certification.

Under its Change Management Certification Program, individuals are equipped with the skills, tools, and knowledge to drive successful change initiatives.

At the conclusion of the interactive three-day course, each participant becomes a certified change practitioner.

Some of the most common course attendees include change leaders, project managers, IT professionals, continuous improvement specialists, HR business partners, and project team members.

In truth, however, any employee tasked with driving change in their company will benefit from the program.

The Prosci change management framework has now trained and certified over 100,000 practitioners around the world with 80% of Fortune 100 companies represented.

Notable clients include Adobe, Kraft, Columbia, Unilever, RBC, and Mercedes-Benz Financial Services.

Prosci’s framework for individual change

Prosci’s framework for individual change comprises two foundational models.

The ADKAR model

adkar-model
The ADKAR model is a management tool designed to assist employees and businesses in transitioning through organizational change. To maximize the chances of employees embracing change, the ADKAR model was developed by author and engineer Jeff Hiatt in 2003. The model seeks to guide people through the change process and importantly, ensure that people do not revert to habitual ways of operating after some time has passed.

The ADKAR model was developed by Hiatt after analyzing change across more than 700 organizations.

It focuses on change at the individual level by helping employees move past any obstacles along the way.

ADKAR is an acronym for five outcomes the individual needs to achieve for a change initiative to be successful:

  1. Awareness – employees need to first understand why change is required.
  2. Desire – to move from change awareness to change adoption, the employee must desire for it to happen. This can be facilitated by identifying benefits relevant to the individual or the root causes of resistance.
  3. Knowledge – the third outcome concerns training and education. Each member of the team needs to understand how their role within the organization will be impacted by the change initiative. Where necessary, training should also be provided for new skills.
  4. Ability – while knowing how to perform a task is one thing, having the confidence to do it is another matter entirely. Change leaders must bridge the gap between knowledge and ability with hands-on performance monitoring and feedback.
  5. Reinforcement – to ensure new roles and habits are embraced over the long term, motivational techniques can be used to celebrate successes and small wins. Such achievements should be celebrated publicly, while employees who slip back into old habits should be dealt with in private.

The Prosci 3-Phase Process

The Prosci 3-Phase Process complements the ADKAR model in that it offers a framework for instituting change at the organizational level.

It is structured yet flexible and guides change initiators through various steps and activities.

The basic structure of the model is as follows:

  • Phase 1 (Prepare Approach) – to start, it is important to develop a customized change management strategy and secure the necessary commitment. Definitions of success and the change impact should also be established.
  • Phase 2 (Manage Change) – the second phase calls on the organization to create, implement, and adopt a change plan as necessary. Performance should be monitored as individuals progress through the various ADKAR transitions.
  • Phase 3 (Sustain Outcomes) – in the last phase, the value of the change is communicated to individuals whose commitment is vital to ensuring the change initiative is sustained. Performance is reviewed to confirm desired results and document any lessons learned. Change management successes are also celebrated.

Key takeaways:

  • Prosci change management is a framework for organizational change that focuses on one individual at a time. It was developed by Jeff Hiatt, founder of the company Prosci which partners with organizations to deliver change management certification.
  • One foundational component of Prosci’s methodology is the ADKAR model, a framework Hiatt himself developed after studying change across more than 700 organizations.
  • The other component is the Prosci 3-Phase Process which helps institute change at the broader, organizational level.

Connected Frameworks

change-management
change-management
Change is an important and necessary fact of life for all organizations. But change is often unsuccessful because the people within organizations are resistant to change. Change management is a systematic approach to managing the transformation of organizational goals, values, technologies, or processes.
kotters-8-step-change-model
Harvard Business School professor Dr. John Kotter has been a thought-leader on organizational change, and he developed Kotter’s 8-step change model, which helps business managers deal with organizational change. Kotter created the 8-step model to drive organizational transformation.
mckinseys-seven-degrees
McKinsey’s Seven Degrees of Freedom for Growth is a strategy tool. Developed by partners at McKinsey and Company, the tool helps businesses understand which opportunities will contribute to expansion, and therefore it helps to prioritize those initiatives.
mckinsey-7-s-model
The McKinsey 7-S Model was developed in the late 1970s by Robert Waterman and Thomas Peters, who were consultants at McKinsey & Company. Waterman and Peters created seven key internal elements that inform a business of how well positioned it is to achieve its goals, based on three hard elements and four soft elements.
lewins-change-management-model
Lewin’s change management model helps businesses manage the uncertainty and resistance associated with change. Kurt Lewin, one of the first academics to focus his research on group dynamics, developed a three-stage model. He proposed that the behavior of individuals happened as a function of group behavior.
adkar-model
The ADKAR model is a management tool designed to assist employees and businesses in transitioning through organizational change. To maximize the chances of employees embracing change, the ADKAR model was developed by author and engineer Jeff Hiatt in 2003. The model seeks to guide people through the change process and importantly, ensure that people do not revert to habitual ways of operating after some time has passed.
force-field-analysis
Social psychologist Kurt Lewin developed the force-field analysis in the 1940s. The force-field analysis is a decision-making tool used to quantify factors that support or oppose a change initiative. Lewin argued that businesses contain dynamic and interactive forces that work together in opposite directions. To institute successful change, the forces driving the change must be stronger than the forces hindering the change.
business-innovation
Business innovation is about creating new opportunities for an organization to reinvent its core offerings, revenue streams, and enhance the value proposition for existing or new customers, thus renewing its whole business model. Business innovation springs by understanding the structure of the market, thus adapting or anticipating those changes.

Read Next: Change Management.

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