Leading Change Guide
Leading clients through service changes
24 June 2016
nousgroup.com.au| 1 |
Leading clients through service changes
Leading Change Guide|24 June 2016
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Contents
1Introduction to leading clients through service changes
2Defining your objectives
Step 1 – Interpret and frame the change
Step 2 – Understand the impacts and planning to address them
Step 3 – Prepare the organisation for change
Step 4 – Prepare clients for the change
Step 5 – Implement the change
Step 6 – Sustain the change
nousgroup.com.au| 1 |
Leading clients through service changes
Leading Change Guide|24 June 2016
1Introduction to leading clients through service changes
Overview of the resource
What is leading changes in service design?
Many organisations providing services to people with a disability under the NDIS will find themselves making changes to their existing services in some way. Managing these changes well is essential to realising the intended benefits. Leading change is an active process.It involves reaching out to your clients, workforce and other stakeholdersand making them a partner to the journey.
Why is it important?
All major changes involve some dip in performance for an organisation, during which clients, employees and other stakeholders are looking to understand what it means for them and learning how things work under new arrangements. Where this change is managed passively or not at all, stakeholders can be left confused and anxious by conflicting information. This is where organisations risk damaging their relationships with stakeholders.
Leading change effectively minimises these risks by actively looking to give the stakeholder a voice in the change and responding directly to their concerns. It demonstrates that the organisation cares about the stakeholder as an individual and communicates a commitment that the organisation is working to make things better for them.
What is the output of this tool?
This tool will support you in understanding the impacts of the change and planning for them. It will also lead you through the process of preparing, implementing and sustaining the change by engaging with your clients, employees and other stakeholders.
This tool provides guidance and templates on each step of the process. After using the tool you will have:
Framed the change and its impacts on your different stakeholder groups
Developed a change management and execution plan
Communicated the change to your employees
Identified and prepared employees to help you engage clients and other stakeholders
Put in place measures to evaluate and sustain the change.
How do I use the tool?
The tool takes you through six steps to leading your organisation and participants through service changes. In each step guidance is provided to assist you. The steps you will undertake are detailed below.
The tool isn’t intended to be completed in one-go. You should take time to do research, talk to your colleagues, seek help where you need it and review what you have done.
When do I use the tool?
Use the tool when you are ready to prepare to launch the change. You should have a clear understanding of the change, as well as how it will impact both your organisation and different stakeholders.
What do I need to know before using this tool?
This tool is appropriate for people and organisations regardless of their level of experience with leading, managing and implementing change. It doesn’t assume experience in change management and provides guidance throughout.
Before using the tool, think about the following.
- Think about your organisation’s strategic goals and direction: Before using the tool you should have a strong understanding of your businesses’ service offering and strategic direction. If you are unsure what your strategic direction is, refer to Tool 1 – Understanding your local market and the NDS guidance document on strategic planning.
- Gather existing information on client perceptions: You will also need to understand your client’s perceptions of your services.This can be from formal engagement with clients by using Tool 2 – Understanding the services clients want or from existing surveys andfeedback from clients.
- Research and collaborate with others: You will likely need to do some external research to complete the tool. You will also likely need to collaborate with others- consider colleagues and stakeholders that can make valuable contributions.
- Take your time and review: Don’t plan on completing the tool in one-go. Work through the tool at your own pace. Set aside a few hours to first go through the tool and then revisit the tool later and revise what you have done.
nousgroup.com.au| 1 |
Leading clients through service changes
Leading Change Guide|24 June 2016
2Defining your objectives
Successfully leading through change requires a clear understanding of your vision is for the future. This means knowing what is changing, why it is happening, and how outcomes will be better for it. To achieve this, the leader of the change needs to have a detailed understanding of how the change will impact the organisation and its stakeholders, including staff and clients. That knowledge provides the foundation for building the commitment and collaboration required to see the change through.
Before you start working with this tool, you will need to have a detailed understanding of the following:
What specific service changes you are making and what you are hoping they will achieve for your organisation.If you have not considered these issues, Tool 1 – Understanding your local market and Tool 2 – Understanding the services clients want can assist you with this.
What impacts these changes will have on your organisation from a financial point of view. If you have not considered this, Tool 4A – Gauging financial impacts of service changes can assist you with this.
What impacts these changes will have on your organisation’s direction, market position, workforce and supporting arrangements. If you have not considered this, Tool 4B – Gauging non-financial impacts of service changes can assist you with this.
How you will be looking at launching and promoting these changes to participants and the wider market. If you have not considered this, Tool 5 – Marketing services under NDIS can assist you with this.
To target your efforts in leading change, we recommend that you think about what parts of the service lifecycle are impacted by the proposed service changes. Reflect on the below table to consider what stage in this lifecycle you are currently at. This should then inform your thinking in filling out the tool.
Table 1: Service lifecycle
What parts of the service lifecycle are impacted by the proposed service changes?We have developed new ideas for services to effectively meet current and future clients’ needs. / We have a number of new services or existing services. We want to select which services will best meet client's needs. / We have modified an existing service. We are going to implement the modified service. / We have partnered with another organisation to deliver a service. We are going to implement the partnered service. / We are going to deliver our services to client groups we don’t currently work with. / We are going to introduce a new service.
Service generation
Not generally relevant to service change. / Service selection
Not generally relevant to service change. / Service modification: existing services / Service modification:
Partnering / Service introduction:
New client groups / Service introduction:
New services
Step 1 – Interpret and frame the change
Step 1 focuses on interpreting and framing the change and building a case for change that will be a reference for all change activity. A specific focus of this step is doing an in-depth exploration of the different impacts on your various stakeholder groups.
You will be working with the following templates in the corresponding pack:
Template A – The case for change
Template B – Understanding impacts for specific stakeholder groups.
Overview
What does this step involve and why is it important?
Successful change requires a common understanding of why the changes need to happen and what the vision is for the future. This is because to bring about change an organisation needs more than the usual effort, commitment and collaboration from its people. This can only be created when everybody involved in the change understands the rationale for it and supports the direction being taken.
Also, change is not one-size-fits-all. Each change has different objectives, stakeholders, challenges and opportunities. Knowing what is important to all stakeholders versus what is of particular interest to specific groups is key to your framing and communication efforts.
Output of this step
The output of this step is an agreed case for change and vision that will be a reference for all change activity, and will be important for communications. The case for change and vision defines what the change means for all key stakeholder groups and what benefits it will deliver to them. After finishing this step, you will have a case for change (Template A) and you will understand the impacts of change for specific stakeholder groups (Template B).
Sources of information
Before the case for change and vision are prepared, the reasons for the change will have been identified. The reason for change could be a new strategic direction or a new business initiative. These will have typically been identified through a business performance review, diagnosis process or a business case.
If you have not identified the change using these processes, consider using Tool 1 – Understanding your local market and Tool 2 – Understanding the services clients want to build an evidence base for change.
Things to think about
What do all stakeholders need to know about the change?
What is the change? A successful change starts with a concise and compelling statement that defines the change for others and what has triggered it. It frames the problem, the change and the vision for the future. This should include:
- The problem. The problem statement brings stakeholders up to speed on the events that have led the organisation to needing to make a change. They need to feel not only that the problem needs to be fixed, but that it needs to be fixed urgently. The NDIS is a clear driver here, but the challenge is in communicating what the NDIS means for your organisation specifically.
- The change. The goal is to have people understand the solution to the problem in a compelling way. At this stage, the solution is an overview. For example, the solution could be introducing a new service that has three key features that will solve the problem.
- The benefits. This statement brings the problem and change together, giving stakeholders confidence that the change will successfully address the problem. For example, you could state that a modified service will result in higher customer satisfaction scores, which means we are more likely to retain our current clients.
Why are we changing? In building the case for change, focus on both the rational and emotional side of change. The rational side of change is about identification of ‘hard’ or tangible improvements, focusing on actions and evidence. The emotional case for change is about addressing emotional resistance. It can create personal commitment and creating change champions and ‘believers’ in the change.
Being compelling in the emotional case for change depends on understanding in which part of the organisation each stakeholder group is especially invested. Demonstrating how the change helps preserve or enhance those points of investment (or reduces threat to them) is key to making an emotional connection and giving stakeholders a personal stake in the change. Using Tool 2 – Understanding the services clients want will be able to help you identify these points.
When will it happen? It is important to provide stakeholders with a realistic timeframe for the change, including any next steps. They will be especially interested in when they will be personally impacted by the change.
What will be of interest to specific stakeholders?
How do I identify my stakeholders? Effectively communicating with stakeholders and participants requires you to have a strong understanding of what matters to them. Stakeholders to your change will broadly fall into one of four categories:
Participants – Individuals who use your services. For the purposes of this exercise, it might also include their families, guardians and caregivers.
Workforce – Individual employees and/or volunteers at your organisation who directly deliver services or support those who do.
Partners – Individuals representing organisations for which you deliver services, or who deliver services to you. It may also include key suppliers.
Others – Other individuals you may identify that have a strong interest in your organisation, but who are not part of one of the above categories.
How do I find common ground between participants? All your clients are individuals who will have different needs from your services. However, segmenting your clients into groups acknowledges that customers are not homogenous whilst ensuring that you can effectively tailor your communication efforts to key groups. This segmentation might be done on the basis of characteristics such as the service they use, their age, disability type and location. Further guidance on segmentation is available in both Tool 2 – Understanding the services clients want and Tool 5 – Marketing services to clients.
How do I understand what parts of the change will impact each stakeholder group? Each of the stakeholder groups will be impacted differently by changes. Where some stakeholders may see benefits for themselves, others will see risks to their relationship with your organisation. To understand the impacts on individual stakeholders, your will need to either have conducted previous stakeholder consultation activities or be quite certain you understand their perspectives. For each group, you will need to consider:
What elements of the change have the biggest impact on them? This will typically be one or more of the following factors: Scope of service delivered; price, location, communication, people and relationships; delivery process; and physical evidence.
What parts do they see as a positive change?
What parts do they see as a potentially negative change?
What is our key message for them? Or, having considered all this, how do we play up the positives and make them feel better about the negatives?
If you don’t have this information, consider using Tool 2 – Understanding the services clients want as a potential source.
What do I do with this information?
By the end of this step, you have the consistent messaging which you can use to communicate with all stakeholders throughout the change and tailored messaging for each stakeholder group. You will use this information to build the change communications to your stakeholders.
Step 2 – Understand the impacts and planning to address them
Step 2 builds the change management and execution plan. It takes your knowledge of how the change will impact your organisation and its stakeholders, considers what actions need to be done to prepare and provides a template for assigning accountability.
You will be working with Template C – Change management and execution plan in the corresponding pack.
Overview
What does this step involve and why is it important?
To deliver the best results with the least waste, investment in change activities should be planned and targeted at what is needed to effectively manage change. This is achieved by defining the change approach up front, with particularly emphasis on how the most important stakeholders will be managed throughout the process.
Output of this step
The change and execution plan will detail how the change will be rolled out, including engagement activities for the most critical stakeholders, controls and expected outcomes. This should act as a guide for all future activities.
Sources of information
To identify key activities, you will need to have a clear view on what aspects of the organisation are directly and indirectly impacted by the change. To help identify these impacts, consider using:
Tool 4A – Gauging financial impacts of service changes
Tool 4B – Gauging non-financial impacts of service changes
Tool 5 – Marketing services under NDIS.
Things to think about
Communicating with stakeholders – What do I tell them? You will have to communicate the change to each of your stakeholders. So communicating to each stakeholder group becomes a significant activity in the change plan. The important part at this stage is flagging the communication activities in the change plan; the remainder of this tool will take you through the process of how to achieve this.
Financial impacts – What do I need to do to prepare for change? New and/or changed services will almost certainly have financial implications for your organisation. These might be minor such as changes to budgeting or may be more significant such as accessing capital. The template proposes a couple of activities that you may wish to consider, however, you may wish to add additional items based on your circumstances.
Non-financial impacts – What do I need to do to prepare for change? As with financial impacts, new and/or changed services will almost certainly have implications for your wider organisation. These will fit under five main categories: strategic direction; place in the market; workforce; operational enablers; and capital assets. The template proposes a couple of activities that you may wish to consider under each of these categories; however, you may wish to add additional items based on your circumstances.