Beyond Prosci's ADKAR Model: Exploring "Balanced Diversity" in Organizational Change Management

If you work in IT, you have probably seen plenty of perfectly fine technical solutions fail, not because the technology was insufficient, but rather because your stakeholders and employees resisted and rejected them. Changing technology is one thing but when this technology changes the way people work, changing their very jobs, it is another matter altogether. We must not underestimate the fear, anxiety, and even hostility such change can generate within our stakeholders and employees. All too often we shortchange (if not outright ignore) the People part of the People, Process, and Technology triangle. To help us overcome this challenge, we all should embrace the general business discipline of Organizational Change Management (OCM). While it does much, much more than this, we can think of OCM as the people side of IT change management. My favorite thought on the subject is, “While Project Management prepares the solution for the organization, OCM prepares the organization for the solution.”

There are many approaches to OCM available to us. Perhaps you have heard about Prosci’s ADKAR and are wondering if that is all there is to OCM. To which I say ADKAR is an amazing resource to have at your fingertips but, as with most complex disciplines, there is always so much more to learn.

Today let’s talk about an OCM discipline I found nearly 10 years ago, Balanced Diversity. Balanced Diversity is a portfolio approach to OCM created by one of the great stalwarts of IT Service Management (ITSM), Karen Ferris. She credits the work of the Network of Business Sustainability and the work done by Dr Stephanie Bertels, Lisa Papania, and Daniel Papania from that organization for the insights she used to create Balanced Diversity.  Their premise is that we have a diverse set of activities/responses at our disposal (many of which we will not use in any given project), and we should take a balanced approach to deploying them, rather than relying on our tried-and-true old favorites. This can be a substantially different mindset as opposed to the directed approach that so many frameworks layout. This is not to say that other frameworks are rigid or prescriptive. Instead, Balanced Diversity takes what children’s literature might call more of a choose-your-own-adventure approach. The goal is to provide us with a richly diverse smorgasbord of options for use to choose between.

What sets Balanced Diversity apart from other OCM approaches?

Balanced Diversity takes a portfolio approach – it lays out the various options in a wheel format and the practitioner chooses the actions that are correct for the situation. But more than that, it places these approaches across the wheel so we can make sure that we cover our efforts evenly. She sets this up as an extremely flexible approach. Since OCM is never a set-it-and-forget-it activity, Ferris has us frequently assess and reassess our approach and rebalance the diversity of our approach on a regular basis.

Figure 1: Organizational Change Portfolio

The terms used in balanced diversity are defined differently than in some other frameworks,

• Quadrants: The four areas defined by the inner ring of the diagram. Four in total. (It’s a quadrant, how many do you want?)
• Categories: The segments attaching to the inner-ring Quadrant names. These are the logical groupings that fall under the Quadrants. Total of 20 Categories.
• Practices: These are the individual activities we perform. They are grouped by Category. Practices make up the outer fringe of the wheel. Ultimately, we make a balanced selection of Practices from across the diversity of the diagram so as not to over or under emphasize any given Quadrant. 59 Practices in total.

As you read on you will notice I will select four or so Practices in each Quadrant for this initiative out of the total of 59 available. This decision will be based on our research and baseline assessment. Since this initiative will have infinite resources available, I must select those that will help the most based on what we know about the initiative and organization. If you want to execute the change successfully, you will need this kind of OCM support. If your goal is to boil the ocean, then you will not need so much OCM but rather a better propane vendor.

Before diving into this framework, you must do your OCM/pre-project homework:

Understand the details of the change, the expectations and outcomes.

Identify and understand your stakeholders and stakeholder groups. Including but not limited to:

• Customers
• Users
• Team members/providers
• People/line managers
• Change advocates/champions

Identify the sponsor and leaders.

Discern and contemplate what will be the potential reactions of the organization to the change.

As with all activities that rely on preparation, research and forethought, you will get this information the old-fashioned way, through activities like interviews, questionnaires and workshops. (Similar to project management, file this preliminary work under the heading of measure twice and cut once.) Having a seasoned and experienced organizational change practitioner on your team pay dividends. None of this is new, all OCM approaches embrace this as best practice. Further, all OCM approaches assert that situations change over time, hence our approach must change with them. This is the hard part, even the keenest OCM practitioners can get stuck in their preferred-actions rut.

Sometimes our OCM plan lands solid impacts; other times all we get are glancing blows that ricochet off ineffectually. We are constantly assessing and reassessing our actions to be successful. Leveraging a tool like Plan Do Check Act, PDCA, what W. Edwards Deming called the Shewhart Cycle, gives us the insight to see when we are on the correct path and when we need to rethink our actions.

• Plan: Identify the issue you need to solve.
• Do: Execute your solutions based on what you identified.
• Check: Verify your results – were you correct?
• Act: Adjust your solution.

Then you move back to Plan to find your next issue to address. The cycle never ends.

Figure 2: PDCA Cycle

What Balanced Diversity offers is this portfolio approach, a menu of activities to selected and (re)balanced as circumstances require. Based on new conditions or updated requirements, we will often readjust the approach, Balanced Diversity gives us the visual to make the needs more concrete.

As mentioned earlier in this article, first and foremost, balance is the goal for Balanced Diversity. All too often we have our favorite arrows in our quiver and those are the first (and sometimes only) ones we use. Based on the situation at hand, we use the Organizational Change Portfolio wheel (figure 1) to make sure that we are not putting all our eggs in one basket, that we are spreading our efforts more or less evenly across the four Quadrants. For example, with the Categories Codify, Assign, Train, Assess and Verify/Audit. IT loves the contents of the Clarifying Expectations Quadrant, often to the exclusion of the others. IT tends to be weaker with the Practices aligned with Informal to Innovation but quite strong with those around Fulfillment to Formal. Again, the portfolio approaches helps us to visualize all activities available to us.

If we find ourselves in the midst of OCM planning and we notice that all of our activities track to this Quadrant, we can expect some substantial issues due to an unbalanced plan. We do not need to select, say, four Practices exactly from each of the four Quadrants. But we should make sure that we are performing approximately equivalent work across all four.

Once we are underway, executing our PDCA work to verify that we are still on target for success, we may find ourselves in several situations:

• Previously successful activities are no longer generating success.
• We have completed certain activities earlier than anticipated.
• One or more activities is either having no impact or even making things worse.

In these conditions, we want to look at the whole of the wheel and rebalance our efforts to produce better results.

First of all, we will discuss the quadrants of this diagram and then we will dive into how to use it to plan your OCM approach.

Components of the Organizational Change Portfolio

Before we use this model, let’s take a moment to dissect it to understand the underlying components.

The Two Axes

This portfolio begins with the four points of its compass:

• Fulfillment: Practices for delivering on current commitments.
• Formal: Practices that establish rules and procedures.
• Innovation: Practices that move the organization further along the path to change.
• Informal: Practices that affect values and behaviors.

Each of the four are critical, none are disposable. Right from the start, we see that this model will help us to find the balance between all four, neither under nor over weighting any of these concerns in order to find success.

These four points are connected by a vertical and a horizonal axis. The intersection of these two axes creates four quadrants. These Quadrants make up the inner ring in figure 1:

• Fostering commitments
• Clarifying expectations
• Instilling Capacity for Change
• Building Momentum for Change

Figure 3: The Four Quadrants

This is where the balance in Balanced Diversity comes from: we select a consistent number of Practices balanced across the four Quadrants. By picking, for example, three or four practices from each Quadrant, we will not over or under empathize any one quadrant but rather we will balance our efforts equally and equitably across the portfolio. The alternative is to stick with the methodologies we are already familiar with at expense of a full and well-rounded approach. Balanced Diversity compels us to stretch out of our comfort zones into what each unique situation actually requires, not merely what we prefer to do.

For those of us conversant in ITIL 4, look to the Four Dimensions of Service Management as an example. In both Balanced Diversity and the Four Dimensions, all four of their sections must be represented to have a complete solution. While some solutions may concentrate bit more heavily on one section over the others, all four must be present and accounted for or else your solution will be dangerously unbalanced. Balance is the sought after goal.

Figure 4: Four Dimensions of Service Management

Let’s begin with the vertical axis: Fulfillment – Innovation.

• Fulfillment: Practices for delivering on current commitments at the top of the diagram.
• Innovation: Practices that move the organization further along the path to change at the bottom of the diagram.

You can see that these two make up the two poles representing the present (Fulfillment) and the future (Innovation). How we meet our current commitments while still meeting the needs for future requirements. Or at even more basic level, this is Delivery vs Change.

Another view on this is the transition from steady-state activities to how resilient we are in the face of change. Since change like this is very reason we will continue to exist as an organization, continual improvement is how organizations future-proof themselves.

The horizontal axis is Informal versus Formal.

• Formal: Practices that establish rules and procedures at the left of the diagram.
• Informal: Practices that affects values and behaviors at the right of the diagram.

This axis concentrates on those things that form our organizational culture, from the formal (rules, codes, and regulations) to the informal (social norms and customs). It is important that Balanced Diversity emphasizes organization culture so heavily as few things will ever have as direct an impact on your enterprise’s overall success as this. As Peter Drucker, one of the great management gurus of the 20^th century, said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, operational excellence for lunch, and everything else for dinner.” Understanding your organization’s culture is critical for any success. This axis tracks how your organization maps from informal influence to formal regulations and structures.

With luck, you are already seeing the need to balance these attributes. Hence the title for this OCM approach: Balanced Diversity. As we examine and assess the project before us, we will use this system to find the right balance of responses and activities needed to be successful. Now, let’s explore the quadrants.

Foster Commitment’s 5 Categories

Let’s define the five Categories and examine associations of the various Practices within them. Note there are 22 Practices in this Category alone. There is no way any organization will have the resources to attack all of them for every single change project. This is where we pull from our research and ground laying exercises to choose the most important Practices for our success. If you are an ADKAR practitioner or if you have read up on it, you will see a great deal of the A-Awareness, D-Desire, A-Ability and R-Reinforcement content here.

Engage: This Category skews to Informal Practices (remember, we are on the left-hand side of the Informal/Formal Axis) the help us to build and sustain change across the organization and they support and encourage the stakeholders who are trying to drive home the change. This is where we engage with our employees and other stakeholders to generate interest and excitement and encourage participation. Remember these all exist on the Informal side of the wheel. As we move through Fostering Commitment, the practices transition to more Fulfillment-facing practices. Notice the practices that line up here with Engage:

• Support: Make it easier for employees to adopt changes.
• Educate: Raise the level of awareness and understanding of the change through the provision information in informal
• Link: Bring the change(s) and initiative(s) down to the individual level by connecting the impact of everyday actions at work with those outside the workplace (and vice versa) and connect organizational activities to personal activities (and vice versa).
• Challenge: Encourage and recognize good ideas or efforts through internal competitions.
• Leverage: Encourage and support grassroots efforts; try to amplify the effect of activities initiated by individuals or small groups.
• Capture quick wins: Identify and complete changes related to the initiative that are less demanding of resources or that result in readily available benefits (low-hanging fruit).
• Recognize: Show awareness and approval or appreciation of efforts to adopt the change(s) through informal accolades such as: publicly recognize employees at staff meetings, creating change awards and/or holding celebrations.

Signal: These activities identify changes as a priority to the organization. These practices will include committing publicly, modelling, allocating resources, self-regulating, adhering, accommodating, integrating work-life balance and investing in the community. These are the actions or gestures that communicate the importance of the change(s) to employees in informal ways. Notice the practices that line up here with Signal:

• Commit: Have the organization and/or senior leadership make a public commitment to the change(s).
• Model: Enact the roles and behaviors organizational leaders want employees to emulate.
• Allocate Resources: Back up the commitments to the change(s) with an allocation of time, money, and people.
• Self-Regulate: Implement voluntary initiatives. Adopt best practices in the absence of, in addition to, regulation.
• Adhere to standards: Comply with a recognized set of standards related to the change(s).
• Accommodate work/life balance: Make an effort to accommodate family/life commitments and social benefits for employees and try to see an employee as a whole person and part of community external to the organization.
• Invest in the community: Contribute to the community and encourage and enable employees to do the same.

Communicate: This category consists of informal practices that rely on the ability to communicate both the value of the change(s) and the changing priorities and expectations for how work gets done. It does so these two channels:

• Tell Stories: Make use of relatable anecdotes and examples to convey concepts related to the change(s).
• Customize: This is trying to tailor the organization’s message to ensure that it is authentic and relevant for different internal and external audiences.

Manage Talent: The Practices in this Category describe how staffing decisions support the transition towards the achievement of the change(s). Managing talent involves hiring people with passion, attitude, and competence to make the change(s) happen and placing the right people in the right roles across the organization.

• Recruit people: Identify and hire people with the required orientation and skills.
• Allocate people: Move people who are passionate about the area of change(s) into roles associated with those change(s).
• Promote people: Move people with the values and skills into higher positions within the organization.

Reinforce: This Category is fully pointed at the Fulfillment end of the Fulfillment/Innovation Axis. Notice how we have travelled from the Informal orientation of Engage through Signal, Communicate, and Manage Talent as somewhere on the spectrum between those two points to Reinforce focusing entirely on Fulfillment. The practices here emphasize the importance of the change(s). Organizations must constantly reinforce the message in various ways to embed it into the hearts and minds of the stakeholders. This is how we create the state of the New Normal and prevent back sliding to the old ways.

• Inform: Act repeatedly to keep stakeholders informed, appraised, and up to date.
• Repeat: Regularly and persistently engage in the activities and behaviors deemed important to the organization to ultimately embed these in the organization’s culture.
• Follow-up: Ensure that the change tasks are competed through monitoring, reviewing, and enquiring on the status of the key tasks.

Quadrant: Clarifying Expectations

We are now entering the second Quadrant and notice how these Categories and Practices will shift from Fulfillment to Formal. This is the reason Balanced Diversity lays out the portfolio approach so we can see where we are over and under laden with effort. This Quadrant sends specific signals about how things should be done by capturing evolving behaviors and procedures in a structured way. The focus here is on the formal Practices that support the implementation of the current change initiatives.

Clarifying Expectation’s 7 Categories

Let’s define the seven Categories and examine associations of the various Practices within them. This Category contains 18 Practices, so it is a bit smaller than Fostering Commitment. As with all Practices, choose only those that are needed, it is very easy to get distracted, choose too many, and end up missing the goals and objectives of your project. Again, if you are already familiar with ADKAR, you will find K-Knowledge and A-Ability here with some D-Desire in there as well.

Codify: This involves capturing the informal and making it explicitly formal by setting goals, creating policies, and operationalizing these goals and policies in the form of practices and procedures.

• Create policies: Develop policies relating to the area of change.
• Set goals: Develop organizational, departmental, and individual goals and targets for the change(s).
• Operationalize: Develop standards, procedures and practices that enact corporate policies, and translate goals and policies into work practices.

Integrate: This is the formal integration of the change into the way the organization currently operates. This includes incorporating the change into the organization’s mission, vision and values, strategy, business plans, business processes, roles, management systems, product design and life cycle.

• Product design and life cycle: Integrate the change into the lifecycle of all products.
• Mission, vision and, values: Incorporate the values related to the change into the organization’s mission, vision, and values. These are formal, overarching statements of commitment that send a clear message to its employees and other stakeholders about it positions in relation to the change.
• Strategy and business plans: Incorporate the change into the organization’s strategic planning process. Organizations should integrate the change across all functions as appropriate.
• Business processes and systems: Incorporate the change into existing business tools and processes. Moving from strategy to planning takes us into the realm of business processes and tools. Organizations are increasingly turning to various types of management systems to manage complex business processes or to track and analyze data.  
• Existing roles: Add responsibilities and expectations to the area of change to the description of every role in the organization.

Assign: The Assign practices allocate responsibility for the change to new or existing roles within the organization including roles and the most senior levels.

• Assign Responsibility to senior leaders: Allocate the responsibility of delivering on the change agenda to senior leadership roles within the organization.
• Create new roles: Expand existing roles or develop new roles within the organization to capture essential responsibilities relating to the change.

Train: Training provides employees with the additional skills and knowledge to help them accomplish tasks, work with systems, or carry out procedures related to or involving the change.

• Train: Train employees in systems or procedures related to the change. This is formal training as contrasted with Informal/Fostering Commitment/Engage/Educate which is more centered on raising awareness informally.

Incent: Incentives encourage employee commitment and involvement with change initiatives. Please note that this Practice focuses on formal financial incentives as opposed to the type of recognition discussed in Informal/Fostering Commitment/Engage/Recognize.

• Incent: Link compensation to the achievement of set objectives related to the change.

Assess: The practices I this category relate to understanding where the organization is, where it wants to go and whether or not it is on track to get there.

• Inventory: Develop and understanding of where an organization is, where it may lead and where it may lag. Conduct base-line assessments.
• Develop metrics: Develop ways to measure progress toward the change goal. This is the process of deciding what to track in order to monitor progress. Developing metrics can be seen as one way to operationalize the change. (This is a great place to consider a framework like ADKAR.)
• Monitor/track: Measure performance against pre-defined objectives. It is crucial to understand the success of any initiative and the collection and analysis of relevant data. Ultimately, this performance data can be used to drive decisions and new initiatives.
• Report: Document performance and progress. Reports communicate an organization’s progress and future toward change.

Verify/Audit: This category involves more formal evaluations than the previous category, Assess. Practices in this Category examine the organization’s systems, processes, projects, or products for reliability, accuracy, adherence to standards, and compliance.

• Verify: Engage an outside party to compare the organization’s activities with corresponding specifications or requirements.
• Audit: Organizational members examine their own systems, processes, projects or products for reliability, accuracy, adherence to standards, and compliance.

Quadrant: Instilling Capacity for Change

With only two Categories, the is the smallest and most concise of the Quadrants. Also notice how Learn focuses on Formal while Develop aims at Innovation. Instilling Capacity for Change takes a formal approach towards building a culture that supports change and innovation. These two Categories can help to embed continued and proactive knowledge building by institutionalizing learning in the organization (Learn) and by providing a foundation for the future initiatives developing formal support mechanisms for change (Develop).

Instilling Capacity for Change’s 2 Categories

The smallest of the four Quadrants, Instilling Capacity for Change has seven Practices spread across two Categories. This Quadrant focuses on how to turn your organization into a learning machine and how to develop what your stakeholders will want. Once more, you will see quite a bit of ADKAR’s K-Knowledge and A-Ability here as well.

Learn: Focuses on creating processes and mechanisms to gather knowledge or skills related to the area of change.

• Scan: Make use of systems or processes to perceive and recognize external information. In a rapidly changing environment, organizations must be constantly and proactively looking for opportunities and threats. Scanning entails continually looking for opportunities.
• Benchmark: Compare your business process and performance to industry bests and/or best practices from other industries. Benchmarking facilitates learning by situating an organization’s performance relative to others.
• Pilot: Make a formal decision to undertake new initiative or practices as a test or trial. Ideas that develop at the grassroots level need to find their way into the formal structures of the organization if they are ever to become embedded as new practices.
• Learn from failure: Establish processes to gather new knowledge and skills from the analysis of past mistakes. Sometimes an organization will make mistakes. Whether it is a failure to execute a routine task or a miscalculation in the process of innovation, organizations need to view moments of failure as opportunities to improve and create momentum for change.
• Reflect: Carefully consider what the organization is doing. It is important to reflect on what the organization is doing as part of the learning process, along with the need to create regular opportunities to reflect.

Develop: Here are the Practices that create or implement new mechanisms to support future initiatives. These Practices include putting in place new and innovative systems and procedures (internal) and also products and services (external) as a foundation for future initiatives.

• Business processes: Implement new internal procedures and/or systems that will support the change. A management system is a proven framework for managing and continually improving the organization’s policies, procedures and processes.
• Products and services: Create new products or services that realize the organization’s commitment to change. The Quadrant Clarifying Expectations discusses the integration of the change to existing products and services. This Practice is concerned with the organization’s development of entirely new products and services to signal its commitment to change and its ability to stay relevant in the future.

Quadrant: Building Momentum for Change

The Building Momentum for Change Quadrant ranges from Innovation to Informal across the two axes. This Quadrant’s six Practices aim to develop the new ideas and new practices needed to bring an organization closer to its long-term goals. They affect change by inspiring and reassuring employees to be bold and fearless as they experiment, try new things and build on each other’s new ideas. In terms of ADKAR, here we will find A-Awareness, D-Desire, and A-Ability well represented.

Building Momentum for Change’s 6 Categories

This Quadrant has six Categories with a total of 12 Practices.

Raise Awareness: This Category looks at techniques used to encourage or convince individuals of the importance of the change for the organization or the need to take transformative action. This corresponds nicely to the first A in ADKAR.

• Trigger: Create events that help to set things in motion that will disrupt the status quo. Sometimes it is necessary to disrupt the status quo to generate an understanding of the need for change.
• Frame: Construct and present a fact or an issue from a particular perspective. It is important to stress the importance of the change in ways that reflect the organization’s values and in language that aligns with the organizational priorities.

Champion: This Category looks at using individual initiative in advancing the change agenda.

• Champion: The act of an individual (a Change Champion) to take up, support or defend a course of action. Champions recognize the importance of the change for the organization and are able to bring the issue onto the organizational agenda.

Invite: The three Practices under Invite reflect attempts to solicit and be receptive to ideas and input from employees and others outside the organization.

• Ask: Proactively seek opinions and ideas about how to grapple with the issues. As an organization develops and changes, employees and other stakeholder feedback becomes a vital input.
• Listen: Be receptive to opinions and new ideas. When attempting to bring about change, organizations often make use of the proactive behaviors already elsewhere. While it is important to raise awareness, champion and even solicit opinions by asking, it is equally important to listen.
• Seek External Help: Solicit input from those outside the organization to find ways to improve internal practices, processes pr systems. Seeking external help exposes the organization to new ideas.

Experiment: This Category explores the ways to support the development of new ways to do things.

• Experiment: Encourage employees to try new things or develop their own solutions. Innovation requires an organization that encourages employees to challenge the rules. This can also encourage engagement and result in a shared learning process.

Re-Envision: Periodically organizations should step back from everyday operational issues and think holistically and prospectively. Re-envisioning involves what the change means to the organization and how this impacts the next steps towards embedding the change.

• Define: Develop an agreed upon definition of the change for the organization. It is important to define what the change means to the organization and ensure that all employees and other stakeholders have a common understanding.
• Backcast: Envision a different future and identify the actions required in order to reach it. Backcasting is a useful practice to ensure an alignment between what the organization is doing now and where it ultimately wants to be. It is about a logical set of steppingstones from the future back to the present.

Share: The practices in this category focus on sharing information internally and/or externally with the aim of furthering the change agenda and working with other organizations to further a broader change agenda

• Share Knowledge Internally: Make use of the organization’s diversity. Changes often impact multipole areas of the organization. To understand how changes in one area may affect or even benefit other parts of the organization, it is a good idea to consult across functional areas.
• Share Knowledge Externally: Sharing experiences with other organizations and groups to learn mor about how they are working to implement changes and solve issues has mutually beneficial outcomes.
• Collaborate with Others: Work with other organizations to try to achieve shared goals. Making headway in implementing change and addressing issues sometimes requires more than informational sharing. To achieve progress on issues, it may be necessary to work with some unlikely partners such as competitors or industry bodies.

Conclusion

OCM remains much more of an art than a science. The more experience with and knowledge of different approaches, the stronger you will be as a practitioner. The real beauty of the Balanced Diversity approach is that you can use it to define the landscape and you can then bring in other disciplines, like Prosci’s ADKAR to help you to draw the map need to trailblaze through that landscape.

The other real benefit of the Balanced Diversity approach is that with seeing the portfolio of options laid out for you, you can pretty easily reject the activities (Practices) that are not appropriate for this set of tasks. Once you have rejected the wrong ones, you will have a much better time at gathering the correct ones and then created that balanced approach.