Vita Benefits (a pseudonym) provides employee insurance benefits to client organizations. The company was founded in 1966 and grew from statewide to nationwide coverage by the 1990s. In 1996 Vita Benefits transitioned to their first computer-based Client Relationship Management (CRM) system. This electronic system enabled sales to track and monitor their clients more easily and was integrated fully with disparate databases and systems throughout the company creating an integrated network of knowledge.
Recently, the previous CRM system reached its “end of life” and will no longer be supported by its parent company without significant investment and upgrades. Instead, Vita Benefits decided to purchase and begin a transition to a new CRM, initiating a much larger systemic change to all connected and integrated systems – coined Benefit System Transformation (BST). These systems are a Customer Relationship Management system, a Quoting Tool, a Client and Contract Data Storage System, and a Benefit Portal to store Vita Benefit’s products and offerings. While these changes will be mandatory for employee use, delivering the new systems to the adopters successfully at this mass scale is both risky and crucial to Vita Benefits to ensure its data integrity and accuracy for future strategic growth.
The change directly affects the client sales teams who focus on offering insurance benefits to diversified markets. Multiple sales divisions focus on selling to different client populations to meet government and regulatory requirements. This change plan was developed for one division, the Health Markets Business Unit (HMBU) (a pseudonym).
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5 Executives, Leadership, and Management Personnel
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4 Sales users
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10 Sales Operations users.
To deliver these new systems appropriately and not disrupt selling, it was determined that only minimum viable functionality be available at launch. Additional functionality and AI/automation will launch as early as 2023.
I followed the Chocolate Model of Change that Dormant proposed (Change, Adopters, Change Agent, Organization (CACAO) model) (Dormant, 2011). Her work “is a synthesis of Rogers work (2003) on the diffusion of innovations (passive) and the work of Kotter (1990) on the purposeful implementation of designed changes (active)” (Marker et al, 2015, p.178). This model provides a systematic process to guide a practitioner towards achieving a successful change plan and implementation.
I analyzed the changes using the five change characteristics that research states are most attributed to change success from the adopter’s point of view (Dormant, 2011).
I completed an assessment to uncover how easy or difficult it would be to implement the changes proposed in BST. A score of 18 (Figure 1, Appendix A.1) revealed change would take careful planning. The adopters will gain great social impact, relative advantage, and compatibility, but they will be neutral in simplicity and will lose confidence in adaptability during the development and delivery stage of the project.
I then reviewed the proposed changes through the framework of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s (1969) change curve (Figure 2). Research shows that loss experienced from a change can mirror that of grief.
An assessment showed that the HMBU adopters are particularly prone to resisting this change, putting it at risk due to their sense of loss (power, knowledge, and trust). I then placed their resistance factors along with potential interventions on a balance sheet and was able to begin brainstorming part of what would evolve into the action plan (Appendix A.5).
I interviewed six members of this adopter group (31% of the population – using random sampling according to job classification) using targeted questions to uncover their stage of adoption. The average stage of adoption for the group was the Mental Tryout Stage (Figure 3). Strategies to employ to help those in the mental tryout stage are the use of demonstrations.
I analyzed the adopters’ social groups and social influences through observation and interviews. From this study, four individuals emerged as the focus and target for the change efforts.
During the analysis, I discovered that the change team, while foundationally structured well, had two areas of weakness. These were:
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Technical – need official time allocations of technical experts.
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Communications – need official time allocations for communications team members and a communication lead.
The sponsor, the Senior Vice President of a shared services department, was determined from an assessment to be a strong sponsor who would benefit the project. However, the sponsor is not responsible for the adopters in the chain of authority but is responsible for their adoption of the new systems (Appendix A.6). The chain of authority is an important aspect in ensuring proper legitimacy and authority to implement effective and successful change.
I analyzed the organization to better understand how these factors serve as drivers or obstacles to BST (Appendix A.7). For this change, Vita Benefits earned a total score of 32, which does not sound an alarm but does not represent terrific alignment.
Using systems thinking we can take a holistic view of the change effort for us to look at the system changes through an organizational systems lens. To complete this analysis, I created a project system sociogram (Appendix A.8) to get a clear picture of the changes from that organizational lens.
I determined that there is poor communication to the adopter group outside of a monthly newsletter, a one-way communication. It was determined that better communication should exist all around on this change.
Using a project balance sheet (Dormant, 2011) adapted from Lewin’s Force Field Analysis (Lewin, 1951), helped to gain a clear view of the forces working for and against the change (Appendix A.9). BST received 69 positive forces vs. 56 negative forces. While these are promising results, continual monitoring of the negative influences and cultural misalignment throughout the project will be key to ensure that the balance tip to jeopardize BST.
Having assessed both the adopters, the change team, and the organization, an action plan for the adopters to receive messages targeted to them using positive messaging was developed. This was adapted and updated as I moved through the CACAO model to account for evidence-based findings (Appendix A.5).
Change management is a dynamic, systemic, and in the best of circumstances, systematic process. But a change project has one purpose in mind: to facilitate successful change while doing the least harm (Dormant, 2011). While this change did align with the burning platform of change (i.e., forcing users to adopt or leave) it still had complex risks to be managed through the change plan developed using the CACAO model.
As a result of this change plan:
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3 additional communications team members were added to the project.
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1 communication lead was named.
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5 technical supports were allocated to process, procedural, and policy issues.
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A “change champion” team was created to allow for a two-way communication loop.
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4 HGBU top opinion leaders and vocal traditionalists made change champions.
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An organizational structure change was implemented, enabling the sponsor to have more authority over the adoption success.
While this change is still underway, it is on track for successful adoption.
Dormant, D. (2011). The chocolate model of change. Lulu.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Science. London: Harper Row.
Marker, A.; Pyke, P.; Ritter, S.; Viskupic, K.; Moll, A.; Landrum, R. E.; Roark, T.; and Shadle, S.. (2015). Applying the CACAO Change Model to Promote Systemic Transformation in STEM. Transforming Institutions: Undergraduate STEM Education for the 21st Century, 176-188.
Kotter, J. P. & Cohen, D. S. (2012). The heart of change: Real life stories of how people have changed their organizations. Harvard Business Review Press.
Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Watkins, R., & Leigh, D. (Eds.). (2009). Handbook of improving performance in the workplace: The handbook of selecting and implementing performance interventions. Wiley.