How To Grow Change Management Capabilities from WITHIN

Organizational change management (OCM) is a hot skillset! In fact, leading universities agree: Wharton, Berkley, Vanderbilt, Cornell, and Northwestern are just a few of the universities that offer change management courses or degrees. But how can organizations grow their change management capabilities from WITHIN? We met with Dr. Keely Killpack—author, executive consultant, and professor, with 17+ years of experience in change management—to hear her thoughts on how organizations can cultivate change management skills in junior resources.  

Start with executive sponsorship 

To build change management skills within an organization, the support must start at the top of the company. Executive leaders need to recognize that change management is a valuable skillset and a priority for the organization to develop in junior resources. The C-suite will need to sponsor the allocation of time, effort, and resources to build the change management competency.   

Pinpoint existing change management capabilities  

Once executives have decided to foster change management as a skillset, they must charge direct leaders with recognizing change management capabilities in existing employees. Pinpointing change management aptitude can happen during performance reviews when discussing the employee’s strengths, opportunities, and goals. For example, most performance management software (e.g., Workday, IBM Watson) gives leaders the opportunity to select competencies that an employee demonstrates. Executive leaders could pre-determine 10 competencies they’d like to see in employees before they are upskilled in change management.  

Provide stretch opportunities  

Employees who show an aptitude for change management should be given OCM tasks that are slightly beyond their current skillset. For example, a technology Business Analyst that supports projects could be assigned a stretch opportunity to complete foundational change management work a few hours a week. During this time, the junior resource could learn core change management skills such as communication, content development, and stakeholder analysis. Junior employees would become upskilled and change management skills become more prevalent within the organization over time: it’s win-win! 

Recruit junior resources on projects 

If a project has an experienced Change Management Practitioner on the team, the client or project leadership should also plan for junior employees to be allocated to the project. This gives junior resources with a desire to learn change management an opportunity to shadow an experienced change management resource and learn how things are done. The junior resource would then gain OCM experience and the experienced change management employee gains practice leading people: another win-win!  

Partner with Human Resources  

Just about every company would like to see their culture strengthened. Change Management Professionals are often especially skilled at developing organizational culture. One way to go about it is to have the C-Suite sponsor a micro project where a junior or aspiring Change Management Professional could partner with HR and support breathing life into the company’s vision, mission, or values. Additionally, the employee could evaluate and provide recommendations for the company’s onboarding process or support the yearly employee satisfaction survey. Invaluable skills can be learned such as crafting survey questions, supporting data analysis, creating visual storytelling, and more.  

Successful organizations know that change will come and to prepare accordingly. Organizations can increase their change capabilities by upskilling junior resources that show an aptitude for OCM. By gaining executive sponsorship, pinpointing change management capabilities, providing stretch opportunities, recruiting junior resources on projects, and partnering with Human Resources, it’s possible to cultivate change management skills from within.   

Contact ChangeStaffing to learn how to upskill junior resources into change management practitioners!    

A very special thank you to Keely Killpack—author, executive consultant and professor, with over 17 years of experience in Change Management—for her thought leadership and for collaborating with us on this blog. 

Written by Kylette Harrison