At RSM, we understand that strategic initiatives are critical for driving business growth and achieving long-term success. Our strategic change management services are designed to help your organization navigate the complexities of strategic change, make a smooth transition and maximize value creation.
What is strategic change management?
Organizational change management (OCM) supports an organization's choice of strategic initiatives by aligning stakeholders, fostering employee buy-in and equipping teams with the necessary skills to adopt new processes and technologies effectively. By managing resistance and driving engagement, OCM increases the likelihood of successful implementation, maximizing the impact and sustainability of strategic initiatives.
Our strategic change management approach
Our strategic change management framework helps organizations navigate the complexities of strategic change by focusing on key areas such as sponsorship, engagement, motivation, communications, training, readiness, metrics and rewards. We drive tangible business outcomes centred on value realization through a structured approach that includes:
- Change definition: Develop a clear future state vision and success measures
- Sponsor and stakeholder engagement: Define change impact and readiness strategy
- Comprehensive communication plan: Perform stakeholder analysis and business process impact assessments
- Training and support: Finalize learning and development plans and provide continuous improvement recommendations
- Sustainability: Conduct feedback loops, lessons learned and recognition exercises
Strategic change management—beyond traditional change management
Our OCM strategy includes a comprehensive project lifecycle that ensures a structured approach to strategic initiatives. We define the change, developing a clear future state vision and setting success measures. Engaging sponsors and stakeholders is crucial, as is defining the change impact and readiness strategy. We develop a comprehensive communication plan, including stakeholder analysis and business process impact assessments. We also finalize training and support and provide continuous improvement recommendations. Through feedback loops, lessons learned and recognition exercises, we strive for sustainability.
Critical success factors of change advisory for strategic initiatives
At RSM, we view challenges as opportunities. Our comprehensive change management strategies include regular communication, training programs and employee involvement in the transformation process to gain buy-in. We invest in continuous learning and development programs to address digital literacy by offering training sessions, workshops and certifications to build necessary skills. We also implement robust cybersecurity measures to decrease the risk of data breaches and noncompliance with regulations. In addition, we perform regular audits and offer appropriate training exercises.
Integration with legacy systems can be challenging, so we develop phased integration plans, leveraging application programming interfaces and middleware, and consider modernizing legacy systems incrementally. Digital transformation can be expensive, so we prioritize initiatives based on the return on investment, seek executive sponsorship and explore cost-effective solutions. Striving for operations that are resilient enough to withstand the interruption and disruption during transition is pivotal to success, so we develop detailed transformation roadmaps and milestones, conduct pilots and implement gradual change.
Resource capacity and governance are also critical. We identify potential conflicting initiatives and responsibilities up front, communicate the level of involvement expected on the project as soon as it is understood, and mitigate any potential resource constraints. We establish clear roles, responsibilities and communication channels for issue/risk resolution and decision making to keep progress moving forward and to avoid headwinds. Governance is key to making decisions when there are potential changes in scope, and we set realistic expectations on timing and milestones based on bandwidth and concurrent initiatives.
Why choose RSM?
By executing OCM principles during your strategic initiatives, your organization can achieve a smooth transition, leverage new technologies and drive sustainable growth. Our strategic approach to change keeps your people at the heart of the transformation, leading to successful adoption, enhanced performance and significant business outcomes.
