How To Infuse Learning with Change Management

We know the rate of change continues to accelerate each year as we embrace the Exponential Age. Organizations that embrace change will define their place as industry leaders, while others resisting change will fall behind.

Change is challenging, even though we know it is inevitable. This is because as humans, we aren't wired for change. As a result, we have to be intentional about how we approach change as it enters our business to set our people on a road to success.

One critical path to embrace change is within each organization's learning and development practices. When change happens, organizations need some type of training or communication to implement their strategic initiatives. Being intentional about infusing learning and development with change management can accelerate the learning process and change adoption in the organization.

Here are three helpful ways to infuse learning and development strategy, design, and experience with change management principles.

1. Use analysis meetings to uncover business growth opportunities. Many times, organizations request training because they know they need to change behavior for success. Formal training is rarely the answer for these behavioral changes, as it doesn't result in the retention or motivation needed to make change progress. During analysis meetings, build in questions that analyze the gap between current business practices and new training materials. If there is a large difference, think about what types of change management principles can help guide your design.
2. Build your Learning and Development strategy to help the company through change. If you know what types of changes are coming to the organization, find ways that you can utilize the learning and development team to be a part of the change planning. Help your organization craft a more inclusive strategy for growth by partnering with your stakeholders as soon as you know change is coming. Use these conversations to build a more human-focused learning design and create a safe space for people to question, understand, and adopt change.
3. Enable change adoption techniques when building learning materials. Think about your training materials and change communications. Are change management processes embedded in the learning design? Use the graphic below to think about ways to infuse more change management principles into your learning experience design.

What are you doing in your organization to accelerate change adoption? I'd love to hear more about how you are utilizing change management in your learning and development practices!