ADKAR Model — Managing the Change More Effectively
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage the change”.
Charles Darwin
Running a business successfully is a great deal, but keeping it running successfully and on the top of competitors' list is more challenging. Being a good business person, be ready to change and upgrade every time, it serves better results by earning profitable business.
Questions that come to mind before a change being implemented:
What if the changes suggested are not liked by all?
What if it hinders the normal functioning of the team for some time period?
What if your team is not ready for the change you are going to implement?
The answer to all is simply a loss!
However we are going to discuss a planned solution in the form of a model called the ADKAR Model to manage the change effectively.
Requirement and the Origin
In the case of both large and small-scale organizations, changes are inevitable. Changes directly announced or implemented make the whole working environment complex, as some may agree and others may oppose.
Actually, what happens, they are not ready for the change neither they are aware of its advantages properly. So before you go for it you should make your team ready for it in advance.
The problem came out with the advent of the ADKAR model as a solution. ADKAR is a result-oriented model prepared to manage the change in an organization by ensuring that every individual is involved in this change.
Model is a combination of five concerns that are awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. The awareness and desire help you to come out of the current state where change is not done, only planned, knowledge and ability helps in transition and reinforcement focus on the future where change needs maintenance.
Jeff Hiatt, the founder of ADKAR developed it with a keen study of more than 14 years and discussions with change partners of about 700 organizations. The model is based upon managing the people side of change and build up a strong foundation so that your change implementation succeeds. It helps to learn how to create awareness, how to desire, develop knowledge, foster ability, and reinforce changes in the organization.
Let us discuss the Model in detail
Awareness
At the time when a change is required or suggested for the organization, your foremost task should be awareness among the team members about the need and the risk behind not performing it. Keep it in front of your team members and their all “whys”. Give them sufficient time to understand the concern behind the purposed change. Moreover, they should be free to investigate its consequences and other details to make their points clear.
Desire
So, now if you have done with the first step, everyone is aware of the requirement of change. But it does not simply mean that they are ready to change, still, you need to foster a desire in them by forecasting the advantages. For that hire/assign some change managers. These change managers will show you clearly how many members are with you in this change and as they are hired for the task will motivate others too by explaining the details.
In this step, you actually need to check what the obstacles are. Sometimes people are scared that if they have sufficient skills to perform after the change. Another reason could be the frustration if their duties may change or they have to work differently as some people are not always ready to come out of their comfort level to perform extra than usual.
Knowledge
This milestone is associated with each member for whom the changes are going to be done. It is primarily a training to deal with the change and education about how their roles, responsibilities, skills, timing, tools, and processes will impact.
Moreover, here the change managers will describe the procedure of how the changes will take place. If required they will suggest the new skills and their training.
For example in the case of an IT company, if you are going to start using new software to work with you may have to train your team members to learn the usage of new software.
Ability
Ability is the capability that your team members must possess before the implementation of change. The knowledge of how the change will affect is not enough, you may require extra skills or should have resources for training to develop new ones. Change leaders collect feedback from the team members that what resources they require to adapt to the change and bring potential issues that can occur to your attention.
Reinforcement
We can say the final implementation of change after tackling all potential obstacles now goes for the real ones if any. The two important tasks here are the celebration of change and to stick the people to the new roles. Help them to maintain the situation properly, give them enough time to adapt, and do not let them step back to the old ones by facing any kind of frustration.
All in all, ADKAR model for change management is a very useful model to implement change with sequential steps by identifying the barriers that could prevent the change from being successful and the loss that may occur in the case of direct implementation.
