Hello all! Last week I begin working through the 6 meta trends in the change management data section of Prosci Chief Innovation Officer Tim Creasey’s post titled Change Management Trends Outlook 2024 and Beyond. The post is based off of Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management – 12th Edition research.

As the Prosci post points out, the organization started conducting specific research on change management trends in 2013. From 2013-2023, six meta trends materialized in the data.

• Converging people, culture, and strategy
• Adopting Agile
• Increasing Awareness of the need for change management
• Leveraging technology
• Building organizational change capability
• Integrating change management and project management

Last week, I looked at increasing awareness of the need for change management. This week’s topic is building organizational change capability.

Building Organizational Change Capability

The Prosci post says that, “Applying change management on an initiative is fine, but building change management capability as an organizational competency is where real organizational transformations—and competitive advantages—come to life because change management becomes part of your organization’s DNA.”

This perspective aligns with my belief, outlined in my 10/31/2023 post that it’s the businesses change, not the change team’s. In that post, I mentioned that when the change team’s main goal is to equip the business to plan and carry out successful change initiatives and the business’s main goal is to be the face and lead doer throughout a change initiative.

• The change team’s focus shifts from being the “doer” of change to equipping the business to plan and carry out successful change initiatives now and going forward.
• The business’s focus shifts from helping the change team to being the lead doer and face of the change. People throughout the business more easily adapt to change that is being led by their business rather than change they think/feel is being spearheaded from the outside.
• The people in the business that are tasked with “making it happen” are involved in crafting the changes.

People more easily adapt to change that is being led by their business rather than change they think/feel is being spearheaded from the outside.

Closing thoughts

I want to hear from you! What are your thoughts on building an organization’s change capability rather than them being dependent on change practitioners from outside their organization to help navigate change? Please post your thoughts and comments below. Let’s help each other become the best change management practitioners and enthusiasts we can be!

Thank you for reading. Until next time, take care and keep up the good work!

Mike