Whether your organization is implementing new technologies or shifting its goals, change management can be a complex process with many stages.
When it comes to your stakeholders, perceptions of your change management process can vary. If you don't address change management concerns through clear, transparent engagement, the situation can quickly spiral out of control due to rumours and assumptions that erode trust and break down important stakeholder relationships.
This blog shows how to incorporate stakeholder engagement into your change management process and how our Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software, Jambo, can help you manage the change process more efficiently and effectively.
Change management is a discipline that provides frameworks and methods for handling how an organization transforms its processes, tools, or structures. The main goal is to ensure that changes are carried out smoothly and successfully, with minimal resistance and maximum engagement from the people affected. This often includes clear planning, strong communication, leadership involvement, and ongoing support to help people move from their current ways of working to new ones.
Stakeholders in your change management project include anyone impacted by the change:
With thoughtful, timely engagement and a structured approach, you can garner support and understanding from all your stakeholders, which is critical to the success of your change management project. However, change isn't always comfortable or welcome, and resistance to your change management process from some stakeholders is inevitable. There are some critical steps to consider.
To learn about the 3 reasons stakeholder relationships are key to your organization's success →
The ADKAR model is a powerful tool for driving successful change management by focusing on individual journeys through change. At Jambo, we believe that managing stakeholder relationships at each stage of ADKAR - Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement - ensures smoother transitions and stronger support for your projects.
By clearly communicating the reasons for change, motivating buy-in, providing the right information, equipping stakeholders with necessary skills, and reinforcing progress, your team can build lasting trust and keep change initiatives on track. With Jambo, you can seamlessly manage these critical steps, making every stage of change more effective and stakeholder-focused.
Who will be impacted by the changes? There will be internal and external stakeholders to consider, so train everyone who could be affected by these changes.
Using a stakeholder map canvas, categorize stakeholders by the level of interest and influence they have in your project and its success. You can use this categorization to inform your decision-making when choosing engagement tactics.
If you're new to stakeholder mapping, our blog shows you how to do a stakeholder mapping exercise →
Take some time to consider the best ways to communicate with your stakeholders:
Not all stakeholders will require the same level of communication (e.g. an intranet announcement will work for some, but not all). Also, not all stakeholders will respond the same to the different forms of communication.
Take the time to decide how you'll communicate with each stakeholder group and remember to be flexible if you need to make changes. Whatever you decide, the communication methods used need to be clear and easy to monitor.
For your change management process to be effective, you need to identify the leaders who will guide your stakeholder engagement efforts. Leaders need to be trustworthy, approachable and knowledgeable.
Decide the roles the leaders will play and who will be responsible for communicating with each stakeholder group. Identify the designated leaders for the change management process and how stakeholders will contact them. These are questions you need to answer before you begin communicating with your stakeholders.
Identify your key messages early to ensure clear and consistent communication. This clarity and consistency will help avoid confusion from mixed messages and ensure that your stakeholders have the vital information they need from the start.
First, you need to have a clear understanding of the goal your organization is trying to achieve by implementing the changes and then define the key messages that explain this to your stakeholders in a relatable way.
Careful wording is critical, as your choices can shape how your stakeholders view the process. Take your time to develop thoughtful messaging. Anyone involved in the process as a leader should be aware of the key messages and any changes to them.
Stakeholders feel more empowered when they are provided with relevant, honest information about upcoming changes as early in the process as possible. Before you begin engaging, ensure you have a plan and a timeline for communicating the upcoming changes.
Always measure there is a feedback loop, so stakeholders know who to contact with concerns or questions. You aren't truly engaging with your stakeholders if they can't contribute to the conversation.
When stakeholders know when to expect communications and who to contact with questions, they feel included, which reduces the likelihood that they will turn to the dreaded rumour mill for information.
Once you've got your plan in place, how will you organize, manage and track all your communications and stakeholder engagement?
If you're not adequately tracking all your stakeholder communications, you're at risk of missing what stakeholders are saying and the opportunity to resolve potential issues quickly. This can negatively impact the success of your change management process and lead to breakdowns in critical stakeholder relationships.
To ensure that stakeholders receive the right information at the right time from the right people, Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software is a tool you can use to manage all your stakeholder engagement in a single, easy-to-understand space.
Learn how Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) software can help your organization→
An SRM can help everyone involved in the change management process to stay on top of all communications with stakeholders collaboratively and intentionally. Project leaders can ensure key messages are being used, check who has been and has not been contacted, and monitor the status of any stakeholder issues. If successfully implementing change is the goal, it is a useful tool.
With workflows designed specifically for managing stakeholder information and engagement efforts, our SRM, Jambo, makes stakeholder engagement during change management straightforward and minimizes disruption. Here are some ways Jambo helps:
When it comes to change management, there will undoubtedly be commitments made to stakeholders. Commitments (you might call them promises) require follow-up. If you or someone on your team forgets to follow up on a commitment to a stakeholder, any trust you had with that person will quickly disintegrate, which is risky, as trust is critical during change management.
Remember, trust takes years to build, but only seconds to destroy. With Jambo's commitments module, you can easily view all commitments (current and past). You can also search commitments by stakeholder contact, which is very useful if you'll be speaking with them and want to ensure you're up to date on any promises that you or your team have made.
With Jambo, your input process is simplified and streamlined. With all your communications and stakeholder information in a single, unified, and organized system, you can better understand what people are saying and decide what's working and what needs to be changed.
With all your information in the system, you can run reports to better understand your project, allowing you to drill down into specifics like the number of open issues or a project overview that's easily shareable with management and key stakeholders.
Jambo's built-in Esri-powered maps visually display your stakeholder engagement activities and help you track areas of concern. This is useful if multiple geographic locations are involved in the project.
Jambo's unique tagging system lets you assign custom tags to stakeholders and engagement records, enabling you to track better and identify trends in your data.
Tags are instrumental when you want to track specific stakeholders. You can add tags to critical stakeholders to categorize them by importance, concerns, interests, etc. You can also filter and search your tags to find all engagement with tagged individuals and run reports on them.
When implementing change, stakeholder issues are bound to arise, and they must be addressed as quickly and tactfully as possible. With Jambo's issues module and easy-to-understand issues timeline, you can monitor current and past issues and understand their impact and priority.
This helps to ensure that you never fail to try to resolve an issue. You'll have access to a timeline of all communication with stakeholders related to the issue, which is essential for building and maintaining stakeholder trust and for keeping your change management project moving forward.
Spreadsheets aren't ideal for managing stakeholder engagement because spreadsheets quickly become overly messy and complicated, which is problematic when you're trying to organize and manage essential information.
Often, it starts with one spreadsheet, but it quickly becomes five, ten, or more. With your information spread across multiple spreadsheets, cross-referencing quickly complicates the review and reporting of vital information.
Additionally, when working on a change management project where multiple people need access to the data to input and share, spreadsheets can become overly complicated and even pose a project risk due to potential data gaps (e.g., from inconsistent input methods or poor organization).
Learn about the 10 reasons why it's time to break up with spreadsheets→
Having the right software to help you stay organized is crucial to your organization's success.
While there are some similarities to SRMs, CRMs are designed to manage customers and sales, not stakeholders. This means that workflows and nomenclature differ, which can be both confusing and costly and greatly impact the tool's effectiveness. Conversely, SRMs are designed for stakeholders with workflows to support their engagement.
Learn more about the difference between SRMs and CRMs →
Key takeaways
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Jambo is the fastest and easiest way for organizations and government departments to manage their stakeholder information, communications, and stakeholder engagement projects.
In these changing times, change management projects are becoming increasingly popular across industries. Jambo helps change management project leaders address many of the unique challenges they face.
To learn more about Jambo and how it can simplify your organization's stakeholder engagement, book a 15-minute call with a Jambo expert!