Change Management at National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL)

A local master in process improvement and leadership consulting, Gary Vansuch, presented to the MileHigh PMI attendees. He demonstrated his tools and references as applied to enterprise changes at NREL.

NREL change leadership is using the book ADKAR: A model for change in business, government, and our community. Gary gave everyone in attendance a copy of the book, which provides the following framework to plan and assess your change management:

Awareness: the individuals must be aware of the need for change.
Desire:
individuals must have a desire to change (WIIFM- what’s in it for me?)
Knowledge: individuals need to know what their new role will be and how they
can be successful when the rules change.
Ability: is additional training
required?
Reinforcement: gestures to thank or celebrate the individual
accomplishment and reinforce the importance of the change to the organization’s
leaders.

Other key points for change managers to consider:

Every change will experience resistance.
People have found job satisfaction,
well-being, and success in the current process, which is threatened by change.
The devil you know … even better than the angel you don’t?
Three phases
of change:
CURRENT (stakeholders live here)
TRANSITION
FUTURE
(project team lives here)

The troops want to hear from 2 people:

1. The general needs to tell the team that we “are charging that hill.”
2. The supervisor needs to tell the team WIIFM.
   

In addition, Gary left us with a Fist-to-Five voting tool and a quote from Gen. Patton. "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."
George S. Patton

Gary Vansuch, Principle Administrator of Quality at NREL.
http://www.asq1313.org/Meetings/2010_Feb_Feature_talk.pdf