Leveraging Change Agents for UX Research and Design to Deliver Co-Designed Change

Observations

For organisational change to occur, a change proposal must be sponsored, it must develop alongside the pressures of business-as-usual for line leaders, and it must be accepted by those whose jobs it will affect – those who will need to implement the change. The best chance for a change initiative to succeed comes when the roles of change sponsor, line leaders, implementers and change agents are fulfilled effectively.

Understanding who is impacted by a change, and how, is essential to effective change management. When the change impact is high, co-design can help ensure that the solution meets stakeholder needs is usable, and will achieve the intended benefits or value, while minimising the cost of the change. Costs associated with change don’t just relate to financial implications; but can also include the level of effort required to implement the change and decreased productivity as users learn a new system or process.

The co-design approach to change management seeks to gain commitment from employees about the change, beyond awareness and simple involvement. It strives for employees to feel a sense of ownership and to be actively engaged in making decisions to shape the change and make it happen, therefore lowering the level of effort required to successfully implement and reinforce the change. The co-design approach is flexible and can leverage elements of design thinking, such as facilitated workshops, contextual enquiries, focus groups, surveys/questionnaires, journey mapping, prototyping, and usability testing.

Effective change management involves numerous change roles. This includes:

• The Change Sponsor: who provides strategic oversight, and control over resources and legitimises and approves change.
• Change Manager: formally responsible for planning and leading change activities.
• Line Leaders: responsible for facilitating the change within their own business unit.
• Implementers: the people who have to make the change work on the ground.
• Change Agents: work to facilitate change initiatives and act as data gatherers, educators, advisers, and facilitators.

While Change Sponsors and Change Managers are often formal project roles, a change agent is anyone who acts intentionally, without formal line authority, to facilitate change in the organisation. The most effective change agents are those who are sensitive to the culture within which they operate.

Some organisations use their line leaders as change agents. This works particularly well in organisations that are more mature in their change management approach and where these leaders are used to taking ownership of change. It is also a good way to implement change, as it is often Line Leaders who are key in making the changes work – they need to translate policy into action for the front-line staff. If they are not engaged, they have the potential to jeopardise the success of the change.

The co-design approach to change management focuses on the active involvement of all stakeholders in the design process. This includes the engagement of formal roles of Change Sponsors and Change Managers, as well as the active involvement of Line Leaders and Change Agents. Within Co-design, User Experience research and design provide mechanisms to effectively engage with end users and stakeholders. Line Leaders and Change Agents both interact with those users who need to make the change work on the ground. As such, an intersection exists between co-design change management and UX research and design. Given their roles in change management, line leaders and change agents are uniquely placed to undertake the relevant UX activities to underpin a co-design approach to change management.

The table below outlines the role of the Line Leaders and Change Agents in change delivery and UX activities that these roles could undertake to underpin a co-design change approach.

Next steps

• As an Executive Sponsor, Project Director, or Line Leader, identify upcoming/planned change activities within your organisation.
• Review the level of impact of these changes on your team.
• Identify opportunities for team members to work as change agents and any skill development that may be required to support the completion of UX activities to underpin upcoming change.

Footnotes

1. ‘Your Complete Guide to Enterprise Change Management’, PROSCI, 2021.
2. ‘The Effective Change Manager: The change management body of knowledge (CMBoK)’, 2nd edn, Change Management Institute, 2022.
3. ‘The Agile Change Playbook’, Agile Change Leadership Institute, 2020.
4. ‘Making Sense of Change Management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organisational change’, 5th edn, Kogan Page, 2019.