How dependent are you on people changing their behavior? — Build Awareness

As you know, if your success depends on people changing their behavior – change management discipline plays an important role.

What are your favorite change management tools?

The Prosci methodology* has been essential in my successes – both in professional and personal environments. ?

ADKAR* is one of my favorite frameworks – it is an effective tool for managing change at an individual level and guides activities at an organizational level.

ADKAR stands for: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement – these are sequential steps or building blocks to achieve change.

In this article I will review ADKAR – Awareness: Why building Awareness is important; What is Awareness; How to assess Awareness; and How to increase Awareness. The review is written based on my study and application of the Prosci change management methodology (please see specific references below) as well as personal experience and reflections.

I want to offer something meaningful and complete, as much as possible; if you do not have much time to read – jump to any section that might be of interest.?

Why building Awareness is important?

When I was first introduced to the ADKAR framework, many projects and changes flushed through my memory, the team thought that change in people’s behavior would be achieved by training them on the new process/system/program. We started with “Knowledge” – and I was wondering why we were not seeing good results when we did that.

It is important to achieve Awareness and Desire prior to engaging people in training – Knowledge building.?Without sufficient Awareness and Desire, they will not engage and listen to any instruction in the way you expect them to.

Consider a personal example for a moment:

A relative is ringing your door bell. You open the door and see a big box – it is a new oven for your kitchen, and it is a surprise.?They ask you to bring it into the house...

Photo by?Ketut Subiyanto?from?Pexels

The moment the box enters the house, they immediately start unpacking and explaining how to use it. The instructions keep flowing your way, and your state of mind is most likely somewhere here:

·??????Why am I getting a new oven? You are trying to stop your relative from talking and unpacking as you did not ask for any new oven!

·??????Do I have to use it? "Whatever", you are indifferent – you can use both ovens (new and existing) or you will not use any.

·??????A new oven is fine, but why did they choose this specific one and why did they not include me in the selection??

You are most likely not paying attention to the instructions on how to use the new oven until you receive some answers. ?

What is Awareness?

The first component and one that is often overlooked is Awareness. Change begins with understanding the “why”:

???????Why is the change needed and why is the change needed now?

???????What is the risk of not changing?

???????What is the nature of the change? – What is changing? What is not changing?

How to assess Awareness: Do people say that they understand why the change is needed? Do they agree with the reasons for making this change now? There are different ways to inquire and assess this, including surveys, polls, team's observations and reflections, informal conversations, etc. Sufficient level of Awareness needs to be achieved before moving to the next step of engagement.

To avoid surprises and "What are you talking about?" situations –

Photo by?Suzy Hazelwood?from?Pexels

Here are some things to consider -

How to Increase Awareness:

1. Credibility of the person communicating: the awareness message is usually delivered by someone respected by the audience receiving the message, a sponsor for this change. Sponsorship for the change is critical and will be a good subject for a separate article.

2. Organizational history: if other changes were or are being implemented successfully – reference them. If history is not in your favor – it may be important to acknowledge it. Awareness message needs to be believed and authentic.

3. Transparency of the information: if data referenced in the message was never shared, it may be hard to believe there is a problem; As possible – support the message by sharing important data components.

4. External and observable drivers: awareness is easier to achieve in the presence of the external and observable factors vs. internal drivers of the organization.

5. People managers: in addition to the sponsor(s), managers/supervisors are also important communicators to build awareness – they can engage people, see how these messages are perceived, and reinforce as necessary.

6. Impacted Audience: review all the groups impacted by the change. Consider appropriate frequency (typically multiple times) and channels of communications, timing (give enough time to process and how it may relate to other organizational changes and priorities), as well as consistency of the message. In addition, you may experience different personalities: some will naturally be more visionary, some will be more skeptical, some may react surprisingly positively until they are expected to take actions, some will tell you that you should have done this before. Creating space to invite a dialogue, inquire, and listen - are all important skills. Consider building relationships and learning from those who are perceived to have a difficult personality. Also, if something is not communicated, people will fill in the blanks based on their belief and personality. This is also how stories are created in our minds. To minimize creation of stories that you do not intend to create - consider what may be obvious to you and say it. In some cases, this may be something like this: "The change is not happening because of ..."

7. Be aware of the process and be ready for some resistance: regardless of the personalities involved, plan for managing resistance. One way to approach this is to identify all the groups impacted by the change. Then, for each: consider why they may be resistant to change and, for each resistance, consider ways to manage.

To briefly follow through on our personal story: What if the relative acknowledged how you love baking and also brought to your attention that your current oven is so old that it is no longer supported. Staying with your current oven will mean that one day you will not be able to bake your favorite cake.?You are also seeing evidence that they carefully listened to all of the things that were important to you in the kitchen when choosing the specific brand. This may still not achieve the desire for you to use the new oven, yet you probably are becoming more aware of why they brought it. ?

More to come…next week's review is on Desire.

(*) References and for more information:

Hiatt, Jeffrey M. (2006). ADKAR: a model for change in business, government and our community.

Hiatt, Jeffrey M.; Creasey, Timothy J. (2012). Change Management: The People Side of Change (2nd ed.)

Prosci Inc.