Change management: a topic we can’t neglect

But how to train your team about change management or prepare them for ongoing changes when they are remotely managed? Take the advantages of VR micro-learning to turn it into an effective learning tool for inspirational change management learning sessions. 

When a change happens, we all react according to the very same pattern. See here the Kübler-Ross change curve. 

What varies is the time it takes to accept the change and the magnitude of the depression phase. 

Acceptance of the change remains the key focus of all persons who decide to implement and communicate about something new & impactful. Being aware of how to initiate the move will help you to implement or to support a major company transition. For that, micro-learning sessions could be a useful tool to have to reduce the gap between the shock and the acceptance of the change. Consequently, that will help to provide the most positive feeling possible to a maximum of employees at the same time toward the communication of a coming change. 

It’s all about communication. 

Communication strategy and the content itself of the communication you want to make, can be prepared using the different concept. It has to be built taken into account the personality types of your team. You can map the personality type of your team using different methods such as: and not limited to: 

• The DiSC® built upon the foundation of what William Moulton Marston identified as four primary emotions and associated behavioural responses. Those are Dominance | Influence | Steadiness  | Conscientiousness. Often explained and used associated with birds, animals or metaphors/things related to the concerned business or specific situations 
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) and its 16 personality types – very interesting method which allows to get a better understanding of how to communicate with team members according to team personality mapping and situations. 

Then to increase the chance of change acceptance, why it is interesting to investigate in creative solutions? 

Because: 

• it will generate positive energy within your team, organisation and company. 
• it will give opportunities to some of your people to embrace the change quickly and help others who would need some extra support: which also contributes to reinforce team spirit and team cohesion. 
• it reduces the inertia to implement changes and keeps brains available for other key topics rather than to fight against the change. 
• and above all, leaders need to keep their working environment safe and positive for their team members. This will help people to enjoy their working days. With a direct impact on an increase of loyalty and overall business growth. 

Creativity in everything you say and everything you do… 

A nice sentence to write, as it is like writing the first words of a long story on a white paper without borders 🙂 … but indeed it is a challenge to fulfil. We have to be business realistic and keep that creativity within the corporate guidelines, internal rules or simply based on higher management recommendations. 

But still, I strongly believe there is space for achieving the necessary creativity for successful change management training.  

1. The key is to keep your concept, whatever the method used, to SIMPLICITY and CLARITY. When communicating or more precisely when training about change management, this will help to better build people’s confidence in the topics. Doing so you avoid confusions, unclear statement, and additional worries on top of the ones initiated by the change itself.
2. To have effective communication when experiencing remote teams is definitely a challenge. When changes are concerned, the topics are critical and often complexed to approach even on a face-to-face meeting. With one or few team members, it is obviously better to keep it the usual online meeting, but still keeping in mind the overdose of online meetings.
3. Having a learning format with embraces team member’s engagement, and motivation to learn.  

Here in my opinion, the advantages of technology-based training can’t be challenged. And VR learning solutions, whatever the format, are the best to inject creativity into your strategy. The efficient of immersed base training has been case-study proved by many companies. And one major case-study was the one published by PWC US.

With enough means, financially and in terms of organisation, I would go for VR headset solutions. Nonetheless, it requires a bigger investment, a longer time of implementations mainly with the development of VR scenarios and environments.  

Alternatively, if the training strategy requires a fast, flexible and cost-effective deployment for any company scale, learning solutions on the mobile app. would be the best approach. 

So, if you want to be creative when writing your ideas on your white board, and to make in a pragmatic and safe way your learning strategy a factor of success, just remember: 

• Communication method 
• Creativity 
• VR learning on mobile

All the best! 

Christophe Beaujard