Blog: Turning Change into Opportunity - Rethinking Change Management

When people think of change management, they often imagine siloed specialists within large consulting teams, focusing exclusively on managing major projects' change aspects. But Audrain Advising views change management differently. For us, change management is critical to every facet of our client work, and we consider it one of the non-negotiable tools in the Audrain Advising toolkit. In our experience, managing change well separates successful businesses and organizations from those continuously stagnating and struggling amidst changing contexts.

At Audrain Advising, we specialize in helping organizations turn change into opportunity. Our approach focuses on the key element of change – people – to ensure sustainable, impactful results.

Why Change Management? 

We’ve all experienced organizations launching an exciting new strategy only to watch it falter during execution. Whether it's a new strategy, product, or program, 70% of change initiatives fail. This failure often occurs because organizations either overlook or are unprepared to address the most critical component: managing change.

Every strategic goal requires change, whether scaling a business, launching a new program, or leading a digital transformation. Even teams with the most profound expertise and well-planned strategies can fail to reach their strategic objectives without effective change management. And we can see why. Businesses begin change efforts to solve particular problems, and change management can feel like a set of non-critical tasks muddying the waters. 

But at the end of the day, change management is more than just a checklist tacked onto strategic projects. It is a comprehensive strategy to guide organizations through the complexities of any transformation. For example, scaling a business requires careful adjustments to workflows, team structures, and culture. And when state agencies adopt new technology, it requires adjustments to workflows, training needs, and the engagement of external stakeholders impacted by the shift in service delivery. If businesses and organizations want to increase the success of their change efforts, then change management strategies must be included in the heart of strategic delivery. 

Our Approach: Keeping People at the Center

At Audrain Advising, we combine change management and project management processes into one dynamic approach to deliver the best outcomes to our clients. We view these disciplines not as separate silos but as deeply interconnected, ensuring seamless execution and lasting success.

Our strategic process integrates change management principles directly into project management frameworks. We leverage the Prosci ADKAR Model for change management, which helps to bridge the gap between organizational goals and the human side of change through the following steps:

1. Build awareness of the business reasons for change.

   
   

2. Cultivate a desire to engage and participate in the change.

   
   

3. Through training, instill the knowledge about how to change.

   
   

4. Enable the ability to realize or implement the change at the required performance level.

   
   

5. Design reinforcement mechanisms to ensure that change sticks.

This strategy ensures that while we manage timelines, budgets, and deliverables, we also proactively address the human elements of change. This approach minimizes resistance, accelerates adoption, and drives meaningful, on-time results.

No two contexts are the same, so we tailor our change management strategies to fit each client’s unique needs. When a change is proposed, Audrain Advising asks our clients an array of targeted questions to help us understand the business case, the impacted business processes, and the groups that will experience the shifts most deeply. By gathering this information up front, we create change management strategies that consider each client’s business, project, or product as a cohesive whole. 

Turning Change into Opportunity

Change doesn’t have to be daunting. At Audrain Advising, we view change as an opportunity—a chance to innovate, grow, and strengthen your business. By keeping people at the center of our process, we ensure that change isn’t just managed but embraced as a catalyst for success.

Ready to turn your challenges into opportunities? Contact us at info@audrainadvising.com or visit our contact page to craft a customized change management strategy that prioritizes your people while delivering on time.