When transformation efforts within organizations fail, there are usually several reasons why, from change fatigue to lack of clear goals. The stakes of failure are high, which means your change management plan needs to be done right the first time. That’s why it’s smart to use visuals like infographics, charts and graphs as you craft your transformation plan.

Venngage for Execs is an ideal tool for executive leaders to harness the power of visuals for organizational transformation management.

Let’s explore some basics about successful change management plans and how you can use Venngage for Execs to create visuals that help enhance their effectiveness, spark team enthusiasm, improve communication and ensure everyone is working toward the same goal.

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Why is a change management plan necessary?

Gartner indicates that about 50% of corporate transformations are obvious failures, while only 34% are clear successes. A report by McKinsey places the blame on a few common causes:

• Lack of buy-in
• Misalignment of capabilities and goals
• Lack of plan or planning infrastructure
• Untracked progress
• Change fatigue
• Need for change unclear or poorly communicated

Aside from not having achieved the primary goal, a failed transformation effort wastes time and money, and it can be devastating to morale, even eroding confidence in leadership. That’s why having a well-crafted, effective and engaging change management plan is so crucial.

What should a change management plan include?

Giving your goals their best chance of becoming a reality means creating an effective change management plan, communicating it to all relevant parties and ensuring objectives are met along the way.

There is no one way to go about developing a change management plan. Some favor Prosci’s ADKAR model:

While others prefer the style of Kotter’s eight-step process:

Regardless of the specific model used to achieve organizational transformation, a successful change management plan should include at least these elements:

• Definition of goals: This must go beyond simply stating the transformational goal to why it’s necessary and will be beneficial for everyone involved. Ensuring there’s a compelling story will help keep team members on board and energized.
• Capability and readiness assessment: Does your current team have the skill set or time to achieve the goals? Who within the organization will take ownership of the process and outcomes?
• Determination of effects: What departments and individuals will be impacted? Organizational transformation is by definition broad, so it’s important to be as specific as possible, determining how the changes will impact all team members.
• Communication strategy: The organization should speak with one voice, but communications about the company’s transformation plans should come from team members’ supervisors rather than being delivered by an executive nobody ever interacts with.
• Training and ongoing support: Will people need to be trained on new systems? If so, when and how will that happen? How will the need for training impact the jobs they do every day that aren’t part of the change initiative?
• Measure results: Any plan must have an objective, and you need to determine how exactly you’ll measure success. In addition to whether you reached your most obvious goal, you should also plan to measure results on a more personal level—did team members feel supported and what was the impact on company culture?

Is making a diagnosis a critical part of a change management plan?

Just as a physician might consider your personal medical history or conditions that run in your family before crafting a treatment plan, diagnosing what has not worked in the past as well as what’s not working now can help you ensure you’re breaking any negative patterns that might cause your change initiative to go off the rails.

Discussions and honest assessments like this are vital parts of the change management process.

Change management plan templates

Now that you understand a bit more background about organizational transformation and what change management plans can involve, let’s take a look at how incorporating visuals like charts, graphs, infographics and more can help keep the train on the tracks.

Change management communication plan

Change management communication plans can be detailed, offering important background information about the project. Separate sections and color-coding help keep information organized.

Change management communication plans can also lean to the simple side, like this one, which could easily be updated quarterly, monthly or weekly. Its compact format provides the basic need-to-know information.

Change management project plan

Mind maps like the one above are ideal not only in the planning phase of organizational transformation but during the project so that individual tasks or departmental goals can be split into manageable bites.

Use this example during initial discussions and planning so you can be sure no major aspects fall through the cracks. Putting together a mind map plan like this can help you take a step back and see the big picture.

Organizational change management plan

Change management plans are often necessary when making major hiring decisions, such as those on the executive level or in roles that are public-facing. This simple step-by-step process infographic can be helpful in cases where filling certain openings requires more input and buy-in than from the hiring manager alone.

Change management roadmap

One of the best ways to incorporate visuals into your change management plans is to translate them into a journey or roadmap format. The example above would be ideal for managing change in a smaller organization.

Not all organizational transformation initiatives come with hard dates or deadlines, and this example illustrates how it’s possible to use simple visual organization, including color-coding, to create a basic change management roadmap.

Change management plan PowerPoint

Consider using Venngage for Business to optimize your change management plan for PowerPoint. Such presentations can be on the lean side, like the one above, giving team members only the basic information they need to get their arms around the goals.

Change management PowerPoints can be more in-depth, and while the template above isn’t about organizational transformation specifically, it’s easy to see how it could be customized to help a single department or team understand where they stand in the change initiative.

Change management timeline

Use this example to set out several hard deadlines and milestones in your change initiative. Keep this format for projects that will take at least a year, or customize it to cover a shorter length of time.

For projects with variable milestones, consider a monthly timeline infographic. Use icons to illustrate the tasks that need to be done.

Use this simple four-milestone change management timeline and update it weekly or monthly to add new milestones and switch up the content. Consider keeping icons consistent; for example, if you include a “communication” bucket in subsequent updates, continue using the same icon so team members know immediately what that section will cover.

Change management proposal

Getting approvals and buy-in from all team members is notoriously difficult when it comes to any transformational initiative, and organizing your proposal into a simple presentation makes it easy to share with team members without overwhelming them.

Making your change management plan digestible and approachable is perhaps the biggest benefit of using visuals to support your plans. This example summarizes an enormous amount of information, keeping everything simple, clear and intuitive.

Tips for using visuals in change management plans

Now that you’ve seen some examples of how visuals can support organizational transformation initiatives, let’s go over some tips before you get started bringing your plans to life.

• Stay on brand: With Venngage’s My Brand Kit, you can ensure all visuals you create for your change management plans use the fonts, colors, logos and other assets related to your brand.
• Keep it simple: There’s a place for highly produced, slick and clever uses of infographics, charts, graphs and other design elements, but your goal here isn’t to blow your audience’s mind with how creative you are. Using visuals in change management plans is most effective when the visuals enhance team members’ understanding of the plan and how they fit into it.
• Make regular updates: Another major reason why organizational changes fail is that people lose steam. If your team finds one infographic about your change management plan helpful, keep making them and update the information as necessary. For many people, seeing a visual representation of the progress they’re making toward the goal will be inspiring.

In summary: Using visuals in your change management plans help engage and inspire your team and give your transformation a better chance for success

Anybody who has ever tried to make even a minor change in their lives knows it’s much easier said than done, and it’s not hard to understand why so many organizational transformation initiatives fail.

But by incorporating visuals into many aspects of your change management plans, you can provide a very real visual representation of the progress you’re making as a team.

Use one of the templates above or start with a blank slate.