How effective are you at change management?
When you think about it, the vast majority of our work projects are change management projects, aren't they? For some of us, our entire careers are about change management.
Consider these scenarios:
You're trying to inspire someone to buy your product or offering (sales or marketing).
You're trying to influence how someone views you or how you want to be valued (your boss, internal teams, HR, performance reviews).
You're trying to help someone realize a project is worth it or not (budget management, strategic impact, attribution).
You're trying to "get on the same page" with someone so you can collaborate more effectively (cross-team projects, alignment, relationship-building).
You're trying to shift the way someone views a concept, or the way they feel about a situation (L&D, conflict resolution, mediation, strategic alignment).
You want someone to agree with your brilliant new idea (idea adoption, agreement, connection, persuasion).
You are trying to align a team toward a shared goal (strategic alignment, project management).
You're training a team on a new system (training, L&D, systems alignment, systems adoption).
You're rolling out a new policy or procedure (HR, alignment and adoption).
You are explaining a new concept or delivering a speech about a strategic narrative (public speaking, PR, L&D, teaching, training).
You're trying to see whether a creative, new proposal might come to fruition (innovation, brainstorming, feasibility analysis).
You are coaching an employee to the next level of their development (L&D, performance management, employee growth, career pathing, HR, management).
I could go on and on. Whether we realize it or not, change is at the core of almost every project. At some point, someone's mind is changing to agree with or disagree with something; someone is going to change from stagnancy to taking action (by purchasing something or working with someone or behaving a certain way); someone is going to feel differently now than they will in a few months; someone is going to try to make their new ideas stick; and someone is going to hope others perceive their value favorably. We are all trying to change other people's minds all the time. And as we gather new information, we can change our minds, too. (The more you know!)
In a positive way, have you ever wanted to inspire someone? Hopefully, if you're a leader, this is a core belief of yours! If you're inspiring people, you're giving them hope and meaning and direction, and a path toward positive change. When you reflect, you're helping yourself change, and when you give others the means to reflect or ask reflective questions, you're helping them change for the better, too. Inspiring others (in your leadership duties), being reflective or helping others reflect, asking the right questions, and motivating others are all additional forms of change management. Being a vehicle for positive change is a part of behavior change nonetheless. (And hopefully when we engage in behavior change activities, we're all always trying to change things for the better! Positive intention is implied!)
Whether we realize it or not, change management is at the core of nearly every project.
In other words, if you've ever tried to make someone think or feel a different way [than they did originally], you have undergone some version of change project.
And we are always changing our minds or dealing with an influx of emotions or trying to make good decisions. Change is the only constant; whether we are trying to change someone's minds or not, it is happening organically within and around us at all times.
Just remember this caveat: This does NOT mean we're always trying to sell someone on something, or that we're always right and we need to get others to agree with us. Those are absolutely not true, not authentic, and not helpful. If you are always selling people on something or trying to get others to agree with your opinion, you aren't leaving space for curiosity, understanding, listening, empathy, connection-building, and changing your own mind. That is not leadership. That is not good communication. That is not effective collaboration. That is an issue (and a culture-breaker!) that needs to be fixed.
Change management is not about selling other people on your idea; it's about guiding people from point A to point B, at a time when it is positively impactful, in a way that is helpful for them.
Change is the only constant. Whether we acknowledge it or not, it is happening organically within and around us at all times.
This means change management principles are applicable to everyone. More specifically speaking for the purpose of this article, change management is a requirement for two seemingly unrelated areas that are more closely related than you'd think: L&D and marketing.
I've been in marketing and communications for a decade and a half. I understand the importance of understanding each party's situations and motivations then drawing connections between the two. For example, I have to empathize with my audience and understand their challenges, successes, perspectives, processes, and needs. I also have to understand the brand I am shaping (or the company that I am creating a brand to represent) along with its vision, mission, values, culture, solutions, value proposition, goals, processes, market, challenges, successes, and needs. Then, here's where the magic happens: I figure out how to represent that brand effectively to that audience. I figure out how to incorporate that audience's perspective into our content. I want our audience to feel seen by our content, and I want our content to represent our brand effectively. It's a balancing act between the two.
Just like L&D.
I'm also in an L&D community (the L&D Collective run by 360Learning! HUGE kudos to that team for running an incredible community that I always look forward to engaging with). I joined this community because of my love for learning and development as an individual and as a leader, especially in the area of leadership development. I am passionate about nurturing tomorrow's communicators and leaders, and L&D has always been something I've naturally gravitated towards, put resources toward, excelled in, and enjoyed leading and learning about, without knowing it was called that - until recently. For this month's book club in the Collective, we are reading Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change by Julie Dirksen. This book is fascinating. I'm only three chapters in, and I'm already seeing parallels across L&D and marketing - specifically when it comes to behavior change.
If you want your L&D program to succeed, you have to change people's behaviors (and before they act, they think, so you have to change their mind, too). You are shifting learners from point A to point B, with those two points appearing at various points along a spectrum. Let's look at a few examples:
You may be guiding them from A-Not knowing they need to change to B-Knowing they need to change but not actually doing it yet.
You may be guiding them from A-Knowing they need to change to B-Actually making the change.
Or you may be at the point where you're taking them from A-They've made the change to B-Maintaining the change.
Each system or individual may be at different points along what Dirksen calls the change ladder, mapping the learner's steps along the behavior change journey.
If you want your marketing to succeed, you have to change behaviors, too. You have to inform, engage, nurture, and guide your target audience through the funnel stages:
Awareness: You want to make them aware of your brand or product.
Consideration: You want them to evaluate your product and consider purchasing from you or working with you.
Conversion: You want them to take the intended action - either filling out a form and providing information so they can be reached out to by your team, downloading content, or purchasing your product.
Loyalty: You want to retain them as a customer. Instead of leaving, you want them to stay.
Advocacy: You want them to advocate for you, almost turning into a brand ambassador, and maybe help change others' minds so they work with you, too.
Your efforts will depend on your goals, target audience, market situation, team setup, internal systems, and more, but either way, if you are marketing to someone, you are presenting them with an idea and hoping they like it (in the most deconstructed terms!).
And when someone goes from not knowing about something to knowing about it, or from not needing it to needing it, or from not using something to using it, you've just changed their thoughts or behaviors. You've completed a change management effort. (Well done!)
Overlapping Principles between Marketing and L&D for Change Management
Here are some elements that can help you in both marketing and L&D:
Empathy. Understand your audience. What is their current situation? What are their motivations? What do they care about? How do they feel about your offering so far, and what do they tend to respond to? (If you can answer the "Why" as well, that would be very helpful.)
Systems & Processes. How are things set up? What does your tech stack look like? How is your team configured? What resources do you have? How do things work right now, and how well is that working for you? How could you set up systems and processes to help you better achieve your goals?
Journey. In marketing, what is the customer journey? In L&D, what is the learning journey? Take a holistic view and know where your customer or learner lives along the spectrum -- know where they are now and where you want them to go next. Acknowledge that it is a journey (a process, not an event) and that it will take time and patience. Check in at key milestones to track progress along the way.
Value-add & Buy-in. Help your audience see the positive impact they will feel as a result of working with you (marketing - engaging with your brand or buying your product; L&D - completing your training or enhancing a skill). Make your value undeniable and your offer irresistible, especially in the audience's context.
Engagement. Involve your audience as deeply as possible. Ingrain them into the process so they become indispensable - and so do you. The more involved they are, the more likely your offering will stick with them or become something they enjoy, look forward to, or engage with more consistently.
Ease. Engaging with you should be extremely simple, clear, and straightforward. If it's not, you can't expect your audience to stick around.
Clarity. Your audience should know exactly what they're learning or engaging with or getting out of every interaction with you. If anyone is confused, you need to work on clarifying your offer, your content, your goal, and/or your strategy.
Delivery. What mode of delivery works best for each audience? Can you diversify your methods to appeal to a variety of learning styles or engagement preferences?
Motivation. What does your audience need right now? What do they want to DO that you can provide them with? What do they care about? How can you tap into their motivations in order to help them take the intended behavior?
Resonance & Relevance. Your content has to matter to them - whether it's promotional content or training materials. They have to see themselves in your resources. If they don't, they won't care. And your job is to make them care so much, they choose to take action on their own. Be relevant, and resonate deeply with them in terms of their personal situation.
Uniqueness. What stands out to your audience among the rest of the noise and clutter? Why should they listen to YOU and no one else? What makes you different and better?
Personalization. What speaks to your audience specifically? Why? How can you make this process more personal for them? How can you connect with them more deeply? Can you segment your audience and shift your messages and content based on more individualized needs while still serving the masses with more general messages, or a more widely cast net? (The key here is balance!)
Strategy. Everything needs to be intentional. Nothing is random. Everything has to roll up into the overarching strategy and align with some high-level vision or goal. Align your teams on the strategy and lean into the intentionality of all of your efforts.
Interconnectivity. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Show how your efforts impact others' work. Show how your efforts add value to the overall effort - the company's mission or corporate goals. Show how things connect so people can feel that doing what you're asking them to do will positively impact other things for them, too.
Feedback. Marketers need customer data to make effective decisions both about content and about product development. Similarly, L&D professionals need to maintain a feedback loop with their learners so they can continually tweak their learning programs and create and provide support that learners need.
Data. How are you collecting data on what works best? How are you analyzing that data to draw conclusions and extract insights? How are you then applying those insights to your next iteration? Keep a steady flow of day coming in and a steady flow of updates and iterations going out.
The final word is that we all have the best intentions at heart. Something I love about L&D is that we are dedicated to the noble pursuit of trying to help other people learn and develop and grow. Taking these lessons from marketing can help valuable lessons stick and ensure long-term adoption, sustainable growth, and maintained engagement, helping people change their behaviors for the better.

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