ADKAR model: 5 steps to successful change

The human nature of corporate employees often leads them to fear any change. But change is a key factor in business development process. To successfully lead a change project within a company, various methods, including the ADKAR model, exist. Explore the ADKAR model and effective tips for its application within your team of collaborators during a change initiative, enhancing your leadership capabilities as a business leader.

Why choose the ADKAR model?

Prosci’s ADKAR model is a tool for managing situations of change based on the management of people in several settings. Its useful for any business leader that wants to bring about change among their employees. The term ADKAR is an acronym composed of the following English words which express the essence of the model created by the Prosci Institute:

• Awareness: Foster an understanding of the objective and the necessity for change through effective communication with the team.
• Desire: Cultivate a personal drive to embrace change within the company as individuals, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment.
• Knowledge: Equip the team with the necessary understanding of the new system brought about by the change, facilitated through training or coaching sessions.
• Ability: Empower individuals and teams with the capacity to enact change, derived from comprehensive coaching or employee training initiatives.
• Reinforcement: Strengthen the innovation introduced by the change process through proactive management actions within the company, ensuring sustained momentum and adoption.

Of all the change support models, Prosci’s ADKAR model stands out for the advantages it brings to all services. Thanks to each stage of this change support model, you increase your chances of successfully implementing an innovation system.

To deal with employees’ natural resistance to change, Prosci’s ADKAR model reduces the risk of blockage at the level of each stakeholder. This model in practice makes it easier to create commitment among the individual, and then among the group.

By including management in the change process, the ADKAR model guarantees better returns on investment for the company.

When to use the ADKAR model it?

The ADKAR model is above all a tool intended for the business manager, the project manager and the change agent or support team. Nothing is set in stone, and it is often necessary to make some changes in order to continue to ensure the success of the actions carried out.

This can take place both within the framework of a marketing campaign project and for a project to implement innovation within the company. Actions carried out within the framework of the ADKAR model primarily aim for change at the individual level to motivate change within the group.

The ADKAR model eliminates resistance to change in the company to identify flaws in the change management process and enable evolution. Thus, it helps to implement a successful action plan to develop the personal and professional skills of each employee. Outside the workplace, Prosci’s ADKAR model is also useful for initiating personal change.

How to use the ADKAR model for change management?

For it to be truly effective, change needs to be incremental. A change objective following a linear path is implemented using the ADKAR model.

Each step of this model plays an important role in bringing the change project to fruition. From the “awareness” stage, it is necessary to find elements (articles or studies) which raise awareness in the individual in the work environment. At this stage, it is about raising awareness of the need for change for better organization of the project.

Following this step, it is possible that one of the employees is not in favor of change, hence the importance of the “desire” phase. Here, the business leader must be able to create commitment and desire for change at the level of each reluctant individual.

The “knowledge” stage is the one during which the organization of coaching and group training takes place. For optimal training effectiveness, it is important that the first two steps are carried out very seriously.

Before moving on to the “reinforcement” stage, the “ability” stage is a mandatory step for putting into practice the knowledge previously acquired through exercises. For some, it will be necessary to show a lot of patience to allow employees to integrate the change.

To lock in changes and integrate them into the company’s management process, “reinforcement” seals the actions carried out within the framework of the ADKAR model. During this stage, an analysis of the result at the level of each stakeholder is necessary.

By embracing the ADKAR model, you can effectively spearhead your change projects and seamlessly navigate future change initiatives within your company.