Change Management Center of Excellence (CoE) 101
As companies continue to realize the value of change management, more organizations are establishing an in-house Center of Excellence (CoE) for Change Management. A Change Management CoE is an indication of the investment that leadership is willing to make to realize the value from numerous changes. It can take many forms, but in general, it is a team that provides best practices, standards, coaching, training, and thought leadership for the organization to build change as a capability. A Change Management CoE makes change a competitive advantage the organization. We spoke with Marisue Fasick, Enterprise Change Management Leader with extensive experience in establishing Change Management CoEs, to learn more. Marisue shared with us how a Change Management CoE enables a company to enhance business benefits such as speed to adoption, reduced disruption, reduced friction and confusion, and sustained benefits. The benefits from change initiatives can also be achieved faster and in full which translates into financial benefits!
Why should a company establish a Change Management CoE?
The most common reason that organizations establish a Change Management CoE is to build change management capabilities for employees across the company. These companies assume that if more employees have change management skills, each change will be rolled out and adopted more seamlessly. While theoretically this is true, upskilling all employees on change management may not be the best value-add. Companies should consider upskilling employees involved with change initiatives on their role in the change process lifecycle, rather than upskilling employees on change management methodology. The people that are typically involved with change initiatives include the OCMer, project managers, solution architects, and more. These employees need to be trained in their role in the change management life cycle. An active Change Management CoE will lead and support the skill-building and culture shift needed.
A Change Management CoE can also act as a portfolio manager that tracks and monitors major change enterprise-wide and identifies where and when employee groups will be affected by multiple changes. The Change Management CoE can then work with leaders across the company to stage and pace those changes to alleviate change saturation. When the Change Management CoE acts as a portfolio manager, it can help avoid blind spots and therefore, costly mistakes for the organization. See Data-driven Enterprise Change is Possible to learn more.
What should a Change Management CoE include?
Each organization’s Change Management CoE will look a bit different but in general, a Change Management CoE needs to have three foundational things: a common change management language, processes, and roles.
While there are a plethora of change management methodologies available—Prosci, Kotter, LaMarsh—what’s most important are the language and processes that a company develops and adopts consistently across projects. The language and processes serve as the foundation for the Change Management CoE and creates a more consistent change management experience for everyone that interacts with the CoE: leadership, people who work on projects, end users, and other stakeholders.
How does the Change Management CoE gain traction?
Sponsorship, sponsorship, sponsorship! Executive sponsorship is key for the success of a project; this same level of sponsorship is critical for launching and maintaining a Change Management CoE. On a related topic, where the Change Management CoE sits within an organization is also important. While there are plenty of places that a Change Management CoE could fit within an organization, the most ideal location will be at a decision-making level in the leadership. Having the CoE reporting into the C-suite (think CFO, CIO, COO), usually results in a more successful Change Management CoE.
In order to be responsive to their internal customers, the Change Management CoE should establish a steering committee that includes representatives from across the company establishing cross-functional representation for decision-making. This governance is an important aspect to standing up and maintaining a Change Management CoE.
Measuring performance and benefits of a CoE
The Change Management CoE needs to understand the company’s performance measures, especially the transformation metrics. These metrics can usually be found by working with the Finance or Strategy Department. The Change Management CoE should ensure that the transformation metrics include end user adoption metrics, and not solely delivery. The Change CoE should be aligned with the important metrics of the company and be able to illustrate how the CoE supports those metrics; this is a key ingredient for success.
Benefits of having a Change Management CoE
The benefits of having a Change Management CoE are extensive!
Reduced disruption and confusion
Establishing a common language for change, where people know their roles and how to contribute, facilitates the change process
Achieving business outcomes through faster adoption
Faster time to achieve value and realization of business benefits
Less costly to implement (or re-implement) a change
Business can take on more change sooner
When you have a change muscle built, an organization has more capacity to handle more changes and employees can trust the change process
A Change Management Center of Excellence is an ideal way to combat change fatigue by tracking and monitoring companywide change, identifying where multiple employee groups are affected by multiple changes, and then working with leaders across the company to stage and pace those changes to alleviate change saturation. Consider establishing a Change Management CoE for your organization so that your company can tackle change initiatives by simply rinsing and repeating!
Contact ChangeStaffing for guidance on standing up a Change Management Center of Excellence for your organization!
A very special thank you to Marisue Fasick, Enterprise Change Management Leader, for her thought leadership and for collaborating with us on this blog.
Written by Kylette Harrison