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Choosing the Right Change Management Model · The Science of Leading

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Science of Leading, I'm Claire Monroe with Edwin Carrington.
• 0:03
  Edwin, we've covered all five elements now, sponsorship, measurable outcomes,
• 0:08
  structure, engagement, governance.
• 0:10
  Today I want to close the loop with the part everyone asks about first and probably
• 0:14
  shouldn't, which change management model to actually use.
• 0:18
  And that's exactly why it comes last, Claire.
• 0:21
  A model is a decision aid, not a replacement for the other four elements.
• 0:26
  Pick the wrong one for the shape of your change and you'll execute a framework
• 0:30
  beautifully while solving the wrong problem.
• 0:32
  So walk me through them, starting with the one most people have heard of,
• 0:35
  ADKAR.
• 0:36
  ADKAR is built for individual adoption, awareness, desire, knowledge,
• 0:41
  ability, reinforcement.
• 0:43
  Use it when success genuinely hinges on individual behavior change,
• 0:47
  new software, new systems, new skills.
• 0:50
  Its strength is that it makes gaps obvious, someone can have full awareness and zero
• 0:55
  ability, and ADKAR forces you to see that gap instead of assuming training solved
• 1:00
  it.
• 1:01
  The watch-out is it can feel too person by person if you actually need
• 1:04
  organization-wide coordination, and it needs strong manager routines behind it or
• 1:10
  the reinforcement step just doesn't happen.
• 1:12
  And Kotter is the one for the big, organization-wide transformation.
• 1:16
  Kotter-style sequencing, yes, when you need cross-functional alignment and sustained
• 1:20
  executive visibility across the whole company.
• 1:23
  It creates urgency and governance structure so the change doesn't drift,
• 1:27
  and it emphasizes communication and reinforcement at scale.
• 1:32
  But it can become a checklist if teams treat the steps as theater,
• 1:35
  and it fails fast without real sponsorship, which, as we covered,
• 1:39
  is consistently the top predictor in Prosci's research regardless of which model
• 1:44
  you're running.
• 1:45
  Lewin's the one I always think of as the freeze metaphor, unfreeze,
• 1:48
  change, refreeze.
• 1:49
  Right, and it's genuinely useful when you need to intentionally break existing
• 1:53
  processes, reset norms, then stabilize the new way.
• 1:58
  It's a clean mental model for culture and behavior resets specifically.
• 2:02
  The honest watch-out is that real organizations rarely refreeze permanently,
• 2:07
  most operate in continuous change, so treat the refreeze as a checkpoint,
• 2:11
  not a permanent state.
• 2:13
  And Lean or PDCA is the one for smaller, iterative fixes.
• 2:16
  Test, learn, standardize.
• 2:19
  Best when you're improving a business process or optimizing a workflow,
• 2:23
  where learning by doing beats a top-down design document.
• 2:27
  It reduces risk because you validate changes in real scenarios instead of on paper.
• 2:33
  But it can under-communicate the why if you treat it like pure operations,
• 2:37
  and it can stall without decision rights and clear metrics behind it,
• 2:41
  same governance and measurement pieces we've already covered.
• 2:44
  So none of these four fix a mismatch, they just help you organize the emphasis once
• 2:48
  you already know the scale.
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  Which is why the real decision starts with scale, people impact,
• 2:53
  and capacity, not the model name.
• 2:56
  Team or function-level change, start with pilot waves and manager enablement.
• 3:02
  Multi-function change, emphasize governance and stakeholder mapping.
• 3:06
  Entire-organization transformation, prioritize sponsorship and a communications
• 3:11
  spine that stays consistent, because that's the one that has to survive the longest
• 3:16
  without wavering.
• 3:17
  And people impact, is that basically asking how many roles are actually changing
• 3:21
  versus just the tools they use?
• 3:23
  Exactly that.
• 3:25
  Are job responsibilities changing, or just tools.
• 3:28
  Are performance metrics changing.
• 3:31
  Are managers expected to coach genuinely new behaviors.
• 3:35
  If the answer is yes across multiple areas, allocate more time to manager coaching
• 3:40
  and champions, not less, because optimism doesn't substitute for reinforcement.
• 3:45
  And capacity is the one everyone treats as infinite until it very obviously isn't.
• 3:50
  Right, so ask plainly.
• 3:51
  How many major change efforts are active right now.
• 3:54
  Which teams are already saturated.
• 3:56
  What work actually stops to make room.
• 3:59
  If you can't create space, your structured approach becomes a structured failure,
• 4:03
  no matter how good the model was on paper.
• 4:05
  Okay, last thing, because I think this is the most practical takeaway of the whole
• 4:09
  series.
• 4:10
  If a mid-sized HR team only has bandwidth to fix one of the five elements first,
• 4:14
  how do they decide which one?
• 4:16
  Simple decision rule.
• 4:18
  If executive sponsorship is weak, fix that first, before you build anything else,
• 4:22
  since it's the top predictor across nearly three decades of Prosci research.
• 4:27
  If adoption risk is high, employee willingness to support change has dropped,
• 4:32
  invest in engagement and champions early.
• 4:35
  If multiple initiatives are competing for the same people, start with governance and
• 4:39
  sequencing, you can't inspire your way out of overload.
• 4:43
  And if leaders are genuinely aligned but execution is sloppy,
• 4:47
  go straight to measurable outcomes, pick five to ten metrics,
• 4:51
  assign owners, and drift dies fast once measurement is real.
• 4:55
  That's a much better starting question than "which framework should we use."
• 4:59
  Every time.
• 5:00
  The framework matters far less than diagnosing correctly which of the five elements
• 5:05
  is actually broken.
• 5:06
  If you want a clearer read on who on your team is built to lead through exactly this
• 5:10
  kind of ambiguity, OAD's free Top Performer Profile gives you that in about seven
• 5:15
  minutes, results in twenty-four hours, no credit card.
• 5:18
  That's O-A-D dot A-I.
• 5:20
  Diagnose first.
• 5:21
  Then pick the tool.
• 5:23
  Never the other way around.
• 5:24
  Perfect place to close out the series.
• 5:26
  Thanks, Edwin.
• 5:26
  Always, Claire.