I have been working in learning and change management for over 10+ years and it continues to surprise me how many organizations treat training as just a simple check box exercise requirement before go live. Training becomes a formality and often attendance numbers are the main KPI as to whether the training was successful.
The employee who is navigating the change needs to be at the centre of your change strategy. Early identification of what level of training is required to ensure that the individuals impacted will adopt the change is crucial.
When training isn’t at the forefront of a change management strategy you can still look like you’re doing everything right. You end up telling people what’s changing, managing any resistance to it and tracking adoption metrics. Everything is set for a successful launch. Then it flops. What you have is a flawless communication plan and an organization that can’t function the day the change goes live.
So how do you actually find out whether the change is possible for the people experiencing it?
You need to ask a different question: will this person actually be able to do what is required when the time comes? This ensures that you find out role by role exactly where the gap is between what someone can do today and what they will need to do tomorrow. That gap is unique for every role, every team, and simply explaining what the change is isn’t going to close that gap.
I saw this most clearly at a brand-new petrochemical facility, where I was brought in to support an operational readiness program built from scratch. There was no existing team to assess and no old way of doing things to improve on. Instead there was a facility that had to go from construction to a live, operating plant, safely, with people who had real experience just not with this plant, this process, or each other yet. There was no tell them what’s changing option, because nothing had ever been the old way. The only question that mattered, for every single person, was whether they could actually, safely do the job once the plant went live. That’s what the entire program got built around, from day one.
That same question works just as well outside a brand-new plant. Once you know where the gaps are you can build your change strategy around them: what the training needs to cover, how much time you need before go-live, who needs additional support, and how success will be measured. Nobody remembers the communication plan. They remember whether they could actually do the job on day one.
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