Using a Participatory Approach to Maximise Engagement/Ownership/Buy-in/Commitment, etc of the Change

Introduction

A lack of ownership by relevant stakeholders can be shown by the amount of resistance to the change initiative.

There are many reasons for stakeholders resisting change, such as:

- lack of communication (employees resist when they feel uninformed about the reasons, benefits, and implications of the change process)

- insufficient involvement (resistance increases when employees are not actively involved in the decision-making, from planning to implementation stages of the change process)

- lack of motivation (resistance is fuelled by the absence of incentives or recognition for adapting to new changes)

- fear of job loss or role owing to the changes (employees often worry about losing their jobs or changes in responsibilities due to organizational restructuring, etc)

- not building on the current organisational culture (generally change challenges the status quo, ie the way we do things around here, etc.)

(for more details, see elsewhere in the knowledge base)

Effective communication is crucial in mitigating resistance, as it helps employees understand the necessity and benefits of the change. Additionally, motivating employees through incentives and involving them in the planning and implementation stages can foster a sense of ownership and reduce opposition. Furthermore, research suggests that organizations should adopt a participatory approach, ensuring transparency and providing support to employees throughout the transition to enhance the success of change initiatives.

NB Most change fails - it does not achieve its objectives.

(for more details, see elsewhere in the knowledge base)

Conduct a participatory workshop

This is part of an effective participatory approach to gain stakeholder ownership/buy-in.

This approach involves engagement, collaboration, participation, co-creating, co-designing, involvement, empowerment, etc.

Process

• Selection of participants (representatives of all relevant stakeholders to attend session)
• Stakeholder analysis (identifying their specific concerns by interviewing them before workshop, etc)
• Setting the scene at the workshop

• guidelines (see next page)
• forecasting (p. 1877)
• peak performance organisation (p. 843)
• neuroscience (p. 1470)
• evolutionary physiology (p. 279)
• natural instincts (p. 1469)
• social media (p. 878)
• major events of life and impacts (p. 521)
• explaining skills (soft v hard) (p. 1478)
• IQ v EQ & SQ (p. 850)
• brain/heart/gut (p. 143)
• motivation (p. 1291)
• persuasion (p. 9405)
• influence v power v authority (p. 1250)
• understanding body-language (words, tone, facial expressions, gestures, etc) (p. 1745), etc

Activities

• Utopia (identify what you want to achieve) (p. 614)
• Macro Scanning (PESTLEC - identify political, economic, sociological, technological, legal, environmental & competition using mind maps plus forces) (p. 801)
• SWOTT (identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats & trends) (p. 573)
• Discussability of Issues (all challenges are identified and allocated to 1 of 3 categories: always discussable, sometimes discussable and never discussable) (p. 509)
• Network Mapping (understand the relationships of different stakeholders, identify informal leaders) (p. 522)
• Business Model (S-curve, explore 10 building blocks, especially value proposition & customer segment, sustainable competitive advantage, etc) (p. 796)
• Culture (understanding where culture is now and where it needs to be in the future, desirability of behaviours, etc) (p. 1862)
• Scenario Planning (explore alternatives identified by business model, etc) (p. 608)
• Driving Forces (explore the forces driving for each alternative and identify strategies to implement) (p. 599)
• 6 Thinking Hats (check the suitability of identified strategies) (p. 701)
• Creative Thinking (creative thinking tools like fan concept, Po, Random Word, etc to identify new strategies) (p. 703/704/705)
• Statements (vision, mission & values) (p. 655)
• Action Plan (how to implement new selected strategies & ranking) (p. 747)
• Reviewing (monitoring & evaluating performance, etc)

This list is not ‘set in concrete’.

(for more techniques see other parts of the Knowledge Base)