Organizational Change Management in and for SharePoint

While Organizational Change Management (OCM) is not new, the evolution of technology platforms allows us to support OCM in new ways that are more compatible with the current ways in which people learn and adopt change.  Specifically, the collaborative power of SharePoint can be leveraged as a change agent to communicate and sustain OCM within your organization.  Remember that users typically only adopt new technology for two reasons - because they have to, or because they want to.  OCM is the process that helps us drive users to the "want to," and it facilitates the communication of why they "have to." 

The specific implementation of the methodology steps vary slightly based on the specific organization for which this approach is being utilized, and the methodology implementation is refined during each phase so that the end results (Execute and Sustain) are one hundred percent on-point and specific to your organization.

We offer the following points for consideration:

• Utilizing decision support tools (such as Oakwood's), perform analysis of the organization as a whole, as well as teams and individuals to assess the readiness for change
• Identify information gaps and change gaps
• Draw conclusions as to business and team readiness
• Evaluate potential points and pockets of resistance
• Determine if cultural changes are needed to support the change
• Ensure that key user community members are asked to be part of the solution. Studies prove that end users who feel a sense of ownership over a new process will not only quickly adopt that process, they will also become process evangelists
• Identify change agents early, based on the analysis done in the first phase. Change agents can be people, teams, and/or technologies that will accelerate the change process 
• Design a communications plan that leverages the identified change agents.  Some examples:
• Create an intranet portal site where on-going communications, announcements, metrics, and scorecards are kept current and visible to all constituents
• Utilize a formal internal marketing program; consider slogans, themes, posters, internal email campaigns, and newsletters as communication mechanisms on importance, priority, and progress
• Leverage social networking to communicate achievements, foster and reinforce awareness and understanding among constituents
• Create a user adoption program that drives usage of the various components of the solution.  The following suggestions have been developed as a SharePoint user adoption program; adapt as needed for your specific solution set.
• Short training videos on how to get more out of the standard SharePoint features (similar to the SharePoint Passalong Tips videos already developed by Oakwood)
• On-portal exercises like a scavenger hunt with a prize drawing at the end
• Tips and Tricks – ask a question and award prizes to the users who come up with the best answer as rated by their peers
• Lunch ‘n’ Learn sessions on specific topics, scheduled at regular intervals throughout teams
• Utilize a dashboard to communicate metrics being measured, such as “documents migrated to system” or “users on board” 
• Leverage social networking features of SharePoint 2010 to 
• create a community of subject matter experts who are a “click for help” away
• create a reliable and non-threatening forum where peer assistance can be requested
• create a blog where tips and tricks, successes, and lessons learned can be shared, commented on, and discussed

It's important for us all, as IT leaders, to recognize opportunities for our team members to embrace change.  You don't need a formal OCM discipline or an OCM department or even an OCM leader to be "OCM aware" and create opportunities for your organization to accelerate user adoption and thus accelerate ROI.