Using Training as a Change Lever....Part One

One of the things I love about my job is that I get to work with lots of different organisations who all have one thing in common - they are facing some significant change.

For some of them this is critical for their survival over the coming years, for others it represents huge opportunity with the promise of gold at the end of the rainbow. The current economic climate means that just about every organisation out there is facing some sort of change challenge.

Why do organisations often find it hard to change? Well for me the answer lies with the fact that organisations are made up of people.......and most people by their very nature want to keep things as they are. They need some (quite often significant) motivation to go through the pain of change and need to believe that there is something 'in it for me' (the WIIFM principle).

I really like the model shown below known as the Commitment Curve. It shows how a persons level of commitment will go through various stages starting from 'contact' where people are just starting to hear about the change, right through to 'internalisation' where people are creating their own innovative ways to change and really owning it.

What I plan to discuss over the coming posts is how training can play a role to help move people up the commitment curve. I will base this on my own experience of what I have seen works and what fails! I will also discuss how you can evaluate the success of your interventions.

The next post will focus on raising awareness and generating a level of understanding about the change......stay tuned....