Tools and resources for change managers in the digital age
The most important aspect of change management is initiating and implementing the proposed change on a practical level. Change Management as only a theory isn’t particularly useful to anyone. This section focuses on how to implement change. Here you will find different ideas, tools and resources that aim to assist leaders, change managers and anyone who is about to initiate change. These resources have been created to help you be successful in a structured manner that is both interactive and fun.
To get the most out of these resources, we recommend that you have a Mentimeter account. You can register for your free account today, and get started in minutes!
Change Management 101 workshop ideas
For those who are about to embark on a change process, or want to introduce the idea of change to your team, these simple exercises can be used to help open up the topic for discussion and help your team to understand what to expect when it comes to change.
If you are about to go through a big change process, introducing change and being transparent with your team can help your project run more smoothly. Plan a workshop that is relevant to your team using these suggested templates:
Exercise: What does change mean to you?
This simple template can be used as an icebreaker for your team to see how they perceive change. To take this exercise further you can then discuss the input, especially if there is a negative response. This can help you to get a quick response from your team and how they feel about change.
What does change mean to you?
Inspiration: Change definition slides
These slides can be used as part of a larger workshop, and provide a number of definitions of change. You can use these slides to start a discussion about change, alternatively, they can be used as reflection points throughout your presentation.
Change definitions
Exercise: Types of change
This exercise can be used to get your team to brainstorm about different types of organizational change that may have already experienced. The purpose of this slide is to help your team understand that change is happening all time, and most of the time it is positive.
What types of changes have you experienced?
Change Management exercises for your team
For those who want to dive deeper, we have created a collection of change management exercises that you can use with your team. Conduct one exercise or combine them to create workshops that can help you plan projects, get decisions made, and generally ease the tension that change can cause.
To get the most of out these exercises, you should add the templates to your Mentimeter account (If you don’t already have a Mentimeter account, create one for free). Use these interactive exercise templates to engage your team in meetings and workshops and inject some fun into your presentations!
Exercise: Swot Analysis
This exercise can help you identify and resolve any perceived weaknesses or threats in your project, strategy, team or organization. This is a good activity to use early in a project or program to highlight what currently works and what doesn’t so you get an accurate feel for the situation before moving on. The outcome of this kind of exercise can help leaders and their teams to decide on what kind of change that needs to be done in order to strengthen a project, team or organization.
This exercise can also be used operationally as part of a quarterly team or organization review process. Which can give leaders a quick insight into how the team perceives the status quo. As an added bonus, by using Mentimeter to collect this information, the feedback will be anonymous, so you can expect to gather more honest data.
How to conduct this exercise
1. The leader of the exercise should create the scope of the SWOT with the group (or beforehand). To scope out the SWOT exercise, choose a project, area or whole organization focus and outline it clearly for the team. Some examples SWOT analysis could be: ‘Our marketing strategy’, ‘the organization as a whole’ or ‘Our new product’.
2. Whatever you decide to focus on, make sure that it is well defined so that everyone involved in the exercise knows what is and isn’t included in the SWOT analysis.
3. The Facilitator asks the Participants to brainstorm all the Strengths they can see and add their thoughts to the discussion by answering the question using Mentimeter. Repeat step 2 for each of the other aspects Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Once each area has been covered, the can discuss and try to identify any links, further thoughts or explanations behind their opinions.
3. The next step of this exercise is to create an action plan Action Plan using the ideas that were shared in the first part of this exercise. The goal here is to turn weaknesses into strengths, threats into opportunities and so on. Try to create a list of actions that the whole team can work on in order to implement change.
Access these templates:
Exercise: Productive Brainstorming
One important part of change and change management is to have innovative ideas that move the company forward. Without new ideas, there cannot be changed. This exercise maps out how to do productive brainstorming.
Quite often, brainstorming sessions do not result in new actionable ideas, or only the ideas from the loudest people in the room are heard, and those more introverted people who are less willing to speak out in front of a room. This exercise uses Mentimeter to facilitate the discussion, meaning that everyone has a chance to share their opportunity and prioritizes those ideas and turning them into actions is made a lot easier.
How to conduct this exercise
1. Before your workshop or meeting, decide on what topic you want to brainstorm about and work on. Some examples of this could be: “how can we get more customers?”, “new product ideas” or “how can we improve our website”.
2. Once you have decided on a topic, add it to them Mentimeter template slide, and get everyone in your team to share their ideas on that topic. You might find that it takes some time for people to get warmed up, but give people plenty of time to fill out their ideas. By allowing the users to submit answers on their smartphones you will create a more inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to share what they think.
3. Once you have the ideas on the screen, if you like, you can spend some time discussing and exploring the ideas that were shared.
4. In the second part of this exercise, you should enter all the ideas that were brainstormed into the 100 point question type. Remember to remove duplicate ideas or group similar ideas together in the list to make prioritization easier.
5. Now you can ask your team to vote on the idea that they would like to see prioritized.
6. Once you have conducted this vote you should now have a list of prioritized initiatives that you and your team can start planning and working on!
Productive brainstorming
Exercise: Quick Team Review
Team Review Workshop is an activity ready-made for any team meeting. You can run in virtually any situation.
It helps you build a shared understanding of a team about what’s working well, areas in need of improvement and areas of opportunity. Use this template on a regular basis to keep your finger on the pulse of your team so you know if something isn’t right and you need to step in to make some serious changes.
Quick Team Review Exercise
Digital Transformation Resources and Exercises
If the type of change you are specifically looking for is digital transformation, this section will provide you with a range of different resources and exercises you get a test with your team.
Watch: Digital Transformation webinar
Digital Transformation Exercises:
What does digital transformation mean to you?
How familiar are you with Digital Transformation?
For more Mentimeter templates on a whole range of topics including icebreakers and just for fun quizzes, take a look at our templates page or log into your account to explore!
This Article is part of a series about Digital Change Management.
See the whole guide: Change Management in the Digital Age
To see more of our webinars, visit the webinar page.
