Andrea Jones breaks down the PROSCI ADKAR change-management model: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Adoption, and Reinforcement. She walks through each step with practical examples like training and adoption pain points, and plans a deeper series on each letter.
I didn't even know what change management as a discipline was until, oh my gosh, I think it was 2017. I did, however, always want to make sure that any project I was working on, any system I was implementing, any pieces of equipment that were being installed with technology transferred and people expected to use them had the final end user on board with whatever it was before we expected them to use it in a sustainable and ongoing way, which, guess what, that's change management. So once I learned about what change management as a discipline was, AJC added that as a service, and we follow the PROSCI methodology of change management. And the acronym is adkar. Briefly, what Adkar stands for is the first A is awareness. In. In order for people to change, they need to be aware of whatever the change is. Okay, that's pretty basic. Awareness. The D stands for desire. This is the crux, in my personal opinion. If people do not want to change, they don't know what is in it for them, why they should do it, how it's going to help the company, any of that, and they don't buy in. They might know about the change, but if they don't want it or desire it, not going to happen. Okay? Awareness, desire. The K stands for knowledge. Now that they're bought in and they know this is important and they understand what's in it for them, they're willing to do it. They need to understand what is expected of them specifically. And this is where training would come in, or understanding of processes and how to manipulate systems. So training, knowledge, how do you do the thing once it's expected of you? Okay, so where desire, knowledge, now we've got the next A, which stands for adoption. We're going to use it. It's here, it's ready for us. Okay, we knew how to, and we're actually using that thing. Whatever. It's a system, it's equipment, it's a change, it's a program, whatever it might be. It's a new office space, whatever. Okay. And finally, reinforcement. Because people get started moving on something, they're using it, but then they expand, experience all kinds of issues or troubles or frustrations or pain points, and there's no reinforcement. Maybe help to get through those pain points. Consistent reinforcement. This is important. Even though we have this pain, we're working to get through it, right? Something that maintains it, then it can still stop in its tracks. And a lot of things do go that far and then get dropped because they're not reinforced properly. That's what Adkar stands for. That's what AJC uses for change management. We'd love to talk more about it. And I'm going to be doing a series here, one for each letter, so we'll be looking forward to exploring them further. Thanks.
