For change management practitioners
Exploring value to strengthen change management practice
Change management work sits at the intersection of people, purpose, and progress. Practitioners help others navigate the human side of organisational changes. They translate strategic intent into meaning and support people to adapt, adopt, and thrive. Practitioners who seek to operate at the highest level of professionalism should be able to clearly name the value they offer to the people they serve.
If this is you, read on!
Why you should care about value
For organisations, value sits behind every change objective. Efficiency, resilience, or growth — these are all forms of value. (Not to be confused with values.)
The challenge for change management practitioners is to make the link between organisational aims and what people actually find valuable in their day-to-day work.
For individuals, value is what gives meaning to their changing experience. Change itself isn’t often the problem. Friction arises when people can’t see what makes it valuable for them.
By understanding what is valuable to each person or group, you can help them connect with the changes in ways that matter.
As a professional practitioner, knowing and articulating your value proposition helps you make better choices about where to focus effort, how to engage with clients, and what a fair and sustainable exchange looks like for your work.
How you can use the value(x) approach
The value(x) approach gives you language, tools, and methods to explore what’s valuable through multiple facets of change — individual, team, organisational and external stakeholders.
- Extend your change management practice to include value-based conversations, without confusion with values, with our handy VALUE framework.
- Read the article ‘Speaking the Language of Value in Organizational Change‘ to explore possibilities for value-based conversations in your change management programs.
- Read the article ‘A Value-based Approach to Shaping a Workscape‘ to gain an overall understanding of taking a value-based approach in an individual’s workscape. Consider how you might encourage this in your change management practice.
- Get your own set of Workscape Value Elements deck of cards and experience the Value Exchange Ledger™ method for yourself as a foundation for helping individuals make sense of what value they want to claim, contribute, or create in their workscape.
- Use the Workscape methods (with Workscape Value Element cards) to help individuals (by themselves or in teams) make sense of what value they want to claim, contribute, or create through changing. This supports more grounded and productive conversations with individuals about their motivation and adaptation.
- Use the Workscape Value Proposition Statement method to clarify the value you can provide as a professional practitioner. This helps you to more easily communicate and negotiate your contribution, and the expectations and boundaries of your practice.
- Consider your potential and actions in influencing organisational conversations about Employee Value Proposition.
- Use the Business Value Elements deck of cards for its vocabulary of value elements as a way to surface what kind of value the organisation is truly trying to achieve. This helps you uncover and better articulate the real strategic intent of change initiatives — especially when it’s unclear or assumed.
- Use the Marketplace Value Elements deck of cards for its vocabulary of value elements to deepen understanding of what is desirable for client/customer/member stakeholders. This supports clearer conversations about what people are actually seeking from products, services, or experiences, and helps challenge assumptions about what will be valued in action.
Bonus: When you combine the Workscape, Business and Marketplace value perspectives, you strengthen your ability to translate between the language of leadership and the lived experience of organisational changing.