Change Acceleration Processes (CAP) represents a group of change management tools that are used to help the change effort to be accelerated towards a common goal. In simple words, it is a set of principles and tools designed to accelerate implementation and increase the success of organizational change. It helps to gauge the political, strategic, cultural environment in the organization and plan for the action which will eventually estimate what a change initiative is capable of achieving with the existing operational processes.
CAP is a strategy to drive effective change and a method to engage the business teams in a dialogue to increase the success, accelerating the implementation of the organizational change efforts. CAP majorly benefits the organization, by making quicker and sustainable changes. Knowing how quickly a change will take place and yields what benefits is important, especially when you are planning the future of an organization. Sometimes it is necessary for changes to occur more quickly than others. It gets the organization to understand and align business functions around a specific change without any challenges.
CAP addresses the following:
- How to create a shared need for the change?
- How to understand and deal with resistance from the key stakeholders?
- How to build an effective influencing strategy and communication plan for the change?
Change is inevitable. Employees and management usually refuse to accept change. As change, is unpredictable, difficult, uncomfortable and risky. Business and market conditions evolve continuously, so the organization should be on toes to be able to adapt successfully to remain in the competition. To achieve the CAP effectively and efficiently, following are the overall processes consisting of seven steps:
- Leading Change: As the saying goes, ‘Don’t talk the talk if you don’t walk the walk’, the leader should demonstrate consistently showing strong commitment towards the change. Leaders should be cautious of their messages and their actions. From the project management perspective, there is a significant risk of failure if the organization lacks leadership commitment to the change initiatives.
- Creating a Shared Need: Here one needs to answer the need for change, irrespective of the reason whether it has been derived from a threat or an opportunity. As the need for change must be outweighed by the resistance by the organization. Reasons must be compelling and resonate not just for the leadership team but that it should appeal to all the stakeholders.
- Shaping a Vision: It is the direction towards how one is going to achieve the outcome of change initiatives. It is a clear statement which tells what, why, who and when the organization will address the changes. The desired outcome should be clearly understood, have genuine reasons and widely accepted.
- Mobilizing Commitment: The strong commitment needs to be invested by business functions in the change to make it work and demand management support in order to support the changes. It also includes engaging, identifying, planning and analyzing the changes.
- Making the Change Last: Once change is starts, the key is to sustain the change and transform it to a new norm, by allocating and adjusting the required funds and surviving through the competition.
- Monitoring the Process of the Change Initiative: Measuring the progress of the CAP project by providing focus, direction and momentum throughout the change process. Ensures insight into level of acceptance throughout the change. It takes corrective action whenever necessary. To reward and encourage it tracks the key events and milestones of the change process
- Changing the Overall Systems and Structures: Making sure management practices are used to complement and reinforce the change. It is to realign and leverage the way the business functions has t organize, communicate, measure, train, reward and promote.
There are various tools for CAP analysis and some of them are ARMI, GPRI, Includes/Excludes, Threat Vs Opportunity, In Frame / Out Frame, Stakeholder analysis, Key constituents Map, Attitude charting, More of/Less of exercise and Elevator Speech.