Change management techniques provide resiliency and keep team members on the same page, which is especially useful as organizations face changing business or industry conditions.
Ensuring that a change management implementation is successful can be a challenging process, but learning lessons from others makes it easier. The following real-world examples show how businesses have managed major changes within their organizations.
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Change management definition
Change management is a strategy for guiding an organization and its members through changes, especially those with far-reaching effects. It generally refers to changes that affect employees at all levels, rather than orders that come from a higher level in the organization.
Change management typically focuses on people by encouraging them to actively participate in the process. This approach helps people adapt to the changes more easily and use them in their daily work.
Change management must also align with an organization’s beliefs, culture, and values to succeed, as a good match feels more natural and allows employees to adopt the change more easily. In addition, a smooth transition is more likely to lead to other lasting changes in the future.
8 real-world change management examples
The following examples of change management serve as inspiration for your own organization’s changes. They take place in a variety of industries and applications, but they all show how change management benefited the organization.
1. Global expansion
A Chicago-based health system announced plans to integrate with two other organizations to expand its global presence to almost 100 locations. Its leaders recognized the need to support the health system growth strategy with an effective change management plan that would provide a repeatable means of supporting personnel on both sides of the integration.
The plan included pairing leads from the health system with staff members in each new organization, providing them with one-on-one guidance through the system. This approach created a group of change practitioners, which the health system held meetings with every two weeks.
Change leaders also used their consistent, well-structured change management model to implement an ERP, which they can also use for future integrations, maintain effective patient care, and solve previous adoption challenges for existing hospital staff in HR, IT, finance, and supply chain functions. In addition, AHS leaders launched an ERP coaching program for the new change practitioners.
The change management work done at the beginning of the integration immediately paid off with high engagement, high awareness, and increased change management maturity throughout the health system.
2. Cross-platform training
Sophos, a global cybersecurity company, was using Salesforce applications to streamline its sales process. However, it was facing challenges in change management due to the frequent updates to Salesforce, which included workflow changes, user interface (UI) enhancements, and other new features.
The sales team was struggling to keep pace with the updates, prompting operations managers to implement Whatfix, a digital adoption platform (DAP). This platform provided the sales team with on-demand training to help them master the new Salesforce features.
The training included interactive walkthroughs for Salesforce’s basic functionality and step-by-step guides for more detailed information on workflows. The change team also created in-app smart tool tips to describe the new controls in the Salesforce updates.
In addition, they embedded videos and other media in the applications to communicate product information, keeping product and sales teams aligned on new products.
The implementation of Whatfix’s DAP helped Sophos successfully manage changes in Salesforce and is a contributing factor to YoY 15% reduction in Sales Ops cases globally — an estimated 12,000 cases a year less.
3. Sustainability
Unilever is a product manufacturer with growing concerns about the sustainability of its products, largely due to climate change and resource depletion. The company needed to address these issues to maintain long-term relations with its customers amid their rising expectations for ethical manufacturing.
Unilever implemented a change management plan for its sustainability measures that included integrating environmentally-friendly methods into its supply chain and manufacturing processes.
This plan included measures for sustainable sourcing that committed the company to sourcing raw materials like tea and palm oil sustainably. For example, Unilever partnered with small farms with environmentally friendly practices. They also increased their focus on reducing emissions and other waste, including a goal of 100% compostable, reusable, or recyclable materials used for packaging.
The company also set targets for energy and water usage in their manufacturing processes. It started using concentrated detergents that require less water and added plant-based alternatives to meat in its manufactured food products.
In addition, Unilever’s change management plan included engagement with communities by supporting initiatives on education for environmental, hygiene, and sanitation issues.
4. Cultural change
Zurich Life, a global insurance company, was struggling to adapt to changing customer behaviors and market conditions in the late 1990s. It had become overly bureaucratic during a time when that industry was experiencing rapid changes in regulation and public policy, causing executives to recognize the need for faster processing times and lower operating costs.
Key steps in this change process included the implementation of software that allowed agents to see all the clients’ investments from a single interface. Zurich also recruited staff to serve as change champions and encouraged executives to increase their visibility to staff, thus improving employee engagement.
Steps for reducing bureaucracy included a reduction in the size and frequency of meetings. Zurich also encouraged staff to identify processes suitable for elimination.
These change management initiatives improved collaboration and customer service at Zurich, resulting in a happier workplace.
5. Digital transformation
As the University of Virginia (UVA) faced constant challenges of digital change, the organization began to experience a growing sense of change fatigue and weren’t achieving the intended results on high-priority projects. The need to remediate this growing trend was the primary reason that UVA decided to implement a change management policy.
Key actions in this initiative included certifying appropriate team members in change management methodologies and building change capabilities into existing workflows. The UVA also encouraged project managers to serve as change managers for their respective projects.
This institution has since achieved its performance goals in managing change, allowing it to thrive in the shifting environment that’s currently common in higher learning and complete its digital transformation.
6. Tool integration
In 2020, Microsoft’s system of tracking sales lacked automation which created challenges like duplication of effort, compliance gaps, and data misalignment for its leaders. As a result, the company set a goal to facilitate sales tracking across all geographic regions and organization roles.
It was determined to build a system that would meet everyone’s needs, despite the knowledge that it would disrupt these operations in the short term. One of the biggest challenges Microsoft faced was the resistance of its own employees to accept new business processes.
The company followed many best practices for managing change, including its use of the Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement (ADKAR) model.
Components of its change management plan included the identification and documentation of key barriers to change. The company also encouraged the people reporting this information to become change agents and held meetings to prioritize project requirements at least once a week.
Additional measures included the deployment of plans to predict the company’s readiness, delivery and adoption of change. Microsoft also implemented multiple channels to gather feedback from end users regarding the proposed changes.
As a result of these practices, Microsoft has created a culture of continuous improvement that adapts change to meet its employees’ needs.
7. Quality improvement
General Electric (GE) had been in business for generations, but CEO Jack Welch felt it needed a complete overhaul to continue growing. He focused on improving product quality, primarily through the use of Six Sigma. This methodology attempts to reduce defects in products and processes, largely through continual testing and retesting.
Welch’s change management plan saved GE $10 billion, which he says accounted for half the changes at the company. The other half came from “people issues”, including the assembly of a team closely aligned in its beliefs, values, and vision.
These changes transformed a company that was already successful into an international powerhouse. GE had a market value of $12 billion when Welch became its CEO in 1981, but it was worth $280 billion when he left the company in 1998.
8. Online ordering
Domino’s was struggling to remain relevant in the highly competitive pizza delivery business in 2008, when key players realized that online orders would become the path to success in that industry.
They convinced Domino’s top management to focus on this channel, which differentiated the company from its competitors at that time. The company implemented a range of technologies that allowed customers to order pizza from many online platforms, including Alexa, Facebook, Google Home, Smart TV, and Twitter.
The next step was to implement customer loyalty programs as a means of driving sales, largely based on customer data the company already had.
This change management implementation was highly successful, helping to make the company more competitive. Domino’s still embraces change today and has recently tested new methods of delivery, including self-driving cars and drones.
Change management improvement
A clear understanding of the obstacles to change is necessary when implementing a change management plan. A DAP can help you with this process by introducing digital technology and processes without disrupting current operations. It also allows team members to learn new software through features like in-app guidance, smart tips, and interactive walkthroughs.
Pipefy’s no-code platform supports change management by empowering business teams to design workflows, document and plan for any risks and impacts, automate approvals, collect feedback, and assign the right people to each stage of implementation.
With real-time audit trails and dashboards, collect the updates you need easily. Pipefy also integrates into existing workflows, minimizing disruption, standardizing workflows, and creating a consistent user experience.
