Using Change Management to Improve Policies and Practices: A Success Story
Written by Samantha Millison, Office of Process Improvement Intern
Edited by Deborah Nelson, Environmental Health and Protection Deputy Director and Operations Director - Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE)
January 18, 2023
Deborah attended and completed the 3-Day Change Management Practitioners Workshop at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), and was able to put change management techniques and methodologies into action through a project focused on improvement to policies and practices for the Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Deborah Nelson is an Environmental Health and Protection Deputy Director and Operations Director for the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE). In her role, she engages in organizational leadership, performance management, and supporting infrastructure services (fiscal, data and personnel). In her prior role as CDPHE’s Board of Health Administrator, she also served on the Department’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) which governs human subjects research for the department. Deborah was onboarded to the IRB for her skills with introducing and documenting workflows, as well as her knowledge in various ethical components.
The CDPHE Data Use and Human Subjects Research Participation Project
Before joining CDPHE, Deborah worked with the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) where she received lean training and facilitated process mapping. She wanted to learn more after this initial exposure, so she decided to enroll in the 3-day Change Management Practitioners Workshop and applied it to her project with the IRB. The project aimed to clarify the current decision-making process. The project was a way to not only raise standards within the organization, but also with affiliated partners. Deborah became the primary sponsor of the project, making sure to bring everyone along and get to the ultimate deliverables. Furthermore, the project had executive sponsors that were intimately involved in the work and numerous division directors with interest. The project team was able to create samples and deliver new procedures, ultimately creating a framework that helped the organization maintain the current business standard.
Incorporating Change Management Principles and Practices into Change to Help the Project Succeed
Deborah believes that Prosci is an exemplary model for the state to use and the ADKAR elements consistently come into play with process improvements. She notes, “it’s always great to be able to start with the problem, and then work from that perspective to avoid drift and scope-creep, or change for the sake of change.” Deborah is confident that the change management techniques from the 3-day course aided her and her team with their project, and specifically emphasizes that she “benefitted from modules that helped to detect symptoms and resistance.” Prosci provided Deborah with a framework to test her own assumptions in order to do a better job of trying to meet people where they were, which is another skill that “pays off in spades” because even if one is not doing change management, they need to listen and be able to facilitate solutions/problem-solving. For Deborah, Prosci techniques and methodologies reinforced skills that align with core competencies.
With the current status and future plans of the project, it is important to continuously build the ADKAR elements of change management. Deborah came back from the 3-day course saying, “these are some ideas of what I think we need to do in order to help solve your problem and get buy-in for the design.” Awareness, coupled with building desire and appreciating capacity, can create synergy. It isn’t linear, but it is relational. Keeping everything “in mix” avoids over-engineering the process or designing structures that will never be lived. Desire needs to be generated, but also needs to be scaled in order to help define scope and strategy, not to mention the person power.
There was a heavy education component in the project which relied on the knowledge element of ADKAR. Getting things communicated in a way that others could hear it but also appreciating other perspectives were equally important. The knowledge aspect involved finding the balance and making sure that relationships were really being built, as well as understanding all of the “tools in the toolbox” to work through challenges. When it comes to ability, the project team had all of the steps written down and they were trying to focus on how to understand/integrate them. They were providing resources on their intranet, as well as making sure they were delivering trainings and opportunities for others to understand. To turn knowledge into ability, there was a way to do it that was permanent and celebratory. People have a tendency to focus on the negative, but there is so much opportunity on the positive side to keep things moving forward affirmatively and trying to keep everyone in that space – which ties to the current stage of ADKAR for this project: reinforcement. The project team is recognizing that they may not have gotten everything right, but they are highlighting those pieces and making adjustments to overall create a synergy between the operation and the programmatic activity as everyone is pointing towards a shared value.
Parting Messages and Future Endeavors
A big part of change management is reflecting back and moving forward. As Deborah looks back on her project, there were both hardships and successes. A common barrier dealt with the need to stop doing some things that people had been doing. People were comfortable with what they had been doing and they did not want that discontinuation, so the project team entered a high-end problem-solving state where they needed to properly explain and communicate changes. Another barrier was simply having the bandwidth to step away from everyday responsibilities in order to plan great new things. Luckily, Deborah had a lot of people who were willing to contribute to the project on top of their daily work which made a huge difference. Amidst the barriers, Deborah and the project team reaped several benefits, such as: improved speed of adoption, increased collaboration, better communication, stronger leaders, and improved culture. Deborah emphasizes that this project “is one that can steep into your culture, and it can do so much in so many directions.”
As far as next steps, Deborah has switched roles and is not as intimately involved. Yet, she continues to use the Prosci methodologies and ADKAR elements of change management on a daily basis in many lines of activity. Deborah’s biggest lesson learned from her project involves understanding and contextualizing her work in appreciation that everyone likes to grow. For people interested in implementing a similar change, Deborah advises to go back to the learning material while going through the project because it can be pretty easy to want to fall back on your own habits. Her parting message is: “You can grow laterally as well as up. There’s just so many ways, and many great opportunities for anyone to do that.”
Want to learn more about Change Management at CDOT? Check out our improvement efforts at the Office of Process Improvement’s website!