Chiefly tool: Change management guide
Chief of Change (management).
Change management for Chiefs of Staff: a practical framework
If you're a Chief of Staff and you haven't worked in change management before, I recommend familiarising yourself with the key tenets. Understanding them helps you deliver and sustain the change you're trying to bring about. The fundamentals still apply in today's world of perma-change.
Change can be anything. A new initiative. A re-org. A new process. Almost everything we do at work is change, and almost everything around us is change too. What follows is a framework that brings structure and a human-centric method to something unavoidable, and often uncomfortable.
Getting a good outcome isn't a shot in the dark. There's a clear process you can follow. It takes the guesswork out and gives you a better return on your effort.
To make this easier, I've put together a free downloadable Google Sheets template covering all five elements below.
The five elements of a solid change plan
1. Change plan
Your change plan is the anchor document. It sets out the change you're making, why it matters, and how you plan to get there. It should include your objectives, scope, timeline, milestones, and the roles involved. Everything else in this list feeds into it, so start here.
2. Stakeholder analysis
Before you touch comms or training, map out who's affected and how. A stakeholder analysis identifies everyone with a stake in the change: sponsors, affected teams, influencers, and blockers. For each one, note their level of influence, their likely attitude, and what they need from you. This is the step people skip, and it's usually the one that causes the most trouble later.
3. Change impact assessment
A change impact assessment looks at how the change actually affects people's day-to-day work. Which processes shift. Which systems change. Which roles need new skills. Score each impact by scale and by how disruptive it is. This tells you where to focus your energy, and where resistance is most likely to appear.
4. Comms plan
Once you know who's affected and how, you can put together a comms plan. This sets out what you communicate, to whom, through which channel, and when. Good comms planning is sequenced: leaders hear things before their teams, and messages develop from each other rather than repeating. It should answer the thing every affected person really wants to know: what this means for them.
5. Training plan
Finally, a training plan closes the gap between where people are now and where they need to be. Use your change impact assessment to identify skills gaps, then map out what training is needed, who delivers it, and when it happens relative to go-live. Training too early gets forgotten. Training too late leaves people unprepared. Timing matters as much as content.
Put it into practice
These five elements work best together, but each have value on their own too - even if it’s just in helping you think through what’s actually going to change and who it’ll affect. Ideally, get all five right and you're likely to see faster adoption, less resistance, and change that stick and delivers the value it’s meant to.
