Here’s a behaviour change model used in clinical settings and executive coaching. Can you use it in your change practice?
A behaviour change model describing the change journey
Prochaska and diClemente developed the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change (TTM)¹. TTM is a powerful model, providing a broad idea of an individual’s change journey.
TTM is a useful guide for change professionals. TTM suggests that individuals move between stages. You might adapt TTM to your project. The model helps you conceive how individuals may move from stage to stage. What do you want individuals to strive towards? You can assess and uncover obstacles to change readiness using TTM. This often happens when you think through various individual’s circumstances. People will also give you clues about these obstacles in your interactions with them. Talk about the future state. Their clues often appear in their thoughts and feelings during the conversation.
Pre-Contemplation:
TTM’s stages include the Pre-Contemplation stage. This is where people are not yet thinking about your change. They may have yet to receive your awareness communications, or turn a blind eye for now as the change doesn’t feel ‘mandated’ to them. There may be no sense of urgency — yet.
Contemplation:
The Contemplation stage is where employees affected by your change have been thinking about the pros and cons of your change. They might not speak with their friendly change professional about their understanding of your messages. Instead, they may speculate and complain about their understanding of the future state. Be mindful that employees at this stage may have a conceptual grasp of your future state.
It’s worth mentioning: this concept in their mind may be very different to what you have in mind. People interpret broad concepts in very different ways. It’s an art to balance concrete details with brief overviews when providing messages.
Specificity invites risk — this includes conveying go-live dates, sharing future state concepts and benefits before they have been ‘firmed up’. But abstract messages invite confusion — or worse: they ignore your messages.
Your initial walk through presentations of the future state might begin in earnest at this stage. Representatives from employee associations attending may exhibit ‘soapbox’ behaviours in your presentations. They, like everyone else, is grappling with “what it means for them”. Their tough questions in the face of a still-intangible future state are fair. Savvy change professionals may seek to note these questions. Their questions (and wording for certain terms) are valuable “market research”. Use this research to begin crafting carefully-worded responses. Share their sentiment with your project team, as potential risks and issues.
Preparation:
The Preparation stage is both an exciting time and hard work for change professionals. Approaching go-live, things are getting real! Employees have booked their training with you, and some have already undergone training. Questions will flood in from employees, their leaders and support teams. Many employees will contact anyone who will listen, with the same question.
Change professionals need sound organisational skills to handle this stage. Well-organised training and other support forums are essential. Timely subject matter expert access requires upfront planning and leader buy-in. You also need visibility over the questions employees ask. What is an important turning point in your change? Your effective transformation of question “traffic” into answers seen by the employee community.
Particular groups or individuals surface in the Preparation phase. They may draw upon change professionals and subject matter experts’ time and expertise. These people may struggle with understanding what they need to do. They may have been vocal, even strident opposition to your change in previous stages. Yet spending the time and effort to help this group of employees is worth it. You learn about their thoughts, feelings and behaviours as they engage with your future state. They receive the individualised support they need, and start to “feel ready” for your change.
If you have managed this stage well, employees are well-prepared to take constructive action at go-live.
Action:
As I write this, hundreds of employees affected by a change I am supporting are about to enter the ‘Action’ stage of TTM. It’s the Sunday before a go-live on a busy Monday morning. The Action phase, in this case, is the point of go-live. Change professionals often observe their project team assemble the last technical elements of the future state. Is the Project Manager living on Red Bulls and adrenaline? Do they follow up their team as they tick off items on their run-sheet?
The Action stage may seem calm on that first day, then pandemonium might ensue. There may be technical obstacles that have popped up. Certain employees surface out of nowhere, needing urgent training or individual support. Change professionals may soon follow their Project Manager’s Red Bull and adrenaline diet (if this hasn’t happened already). Or chocolate — mmm, Peanut M & Ms! This effective yet unhealthy coping mechanism usually happens during these first weeks of the Action phase. Just kidding — most Project Managers the author has worked with are generally stress-resilient and eat healthy diets, enhancing their effectiveness. Project Managers are often quite calm at this stage, and sail into Project Board meetings with confidence. Not kidding about the chocolate though. The project team may have to clean up small issues that surface, but may feel relieved that the big day has come and gone.
Maintenance
There is also a step in the model for Maintenance, where a target behaviour has become a habit. So at least six months, for example. In many projects, change professionals roll off their project not long after go-live. This could be a few weeks, or a few months, depending on the change. Handover to ‘business as usual’ (BAU) takes place during the Maintenance phase. Change professionals may encourage employees to channel their enquiries to BAU teams. We may have built relationships with individual employees and teams through the Preparation and Action phases of TTM. Thus it can be bittersweet for us to encourage this behaviour. Building these relationships during intense times can be satisfying for many change professionals. Yet encouraging self-sufficiency is necessary as the organisation seeks to sustain the change.
Relapse
TTM also considers relapse as a part of humans adjusting to change. We are humans after all; and we could revert to previous behaviours. This is especially the case when we are under a bit of pressure or have a change in circumstance. And relapse is a normal part of change, and a worthwhile addition to a model like this. Relapse is more appropriate to changes where people can revert to previous behaviours, such as smoking. For implementing a future state in a work context, there may be no viable alternate behaviour to fall back on. Major groups might find the future state doesn’t work for them after several weeks. They often meet with project leaders, and their requirements often become another project.
Here is a one-minute video describing how to link this model to your change practice.
Recap
As change professionals, we can translate TTM to understand the struggle to change at an individual and team level. Change might be thrust upon an individual or a team. Yet they still have the choice to contemplate the change. They still have the choice to engage in the change and turn it into a habit. TTM is another change model to help you walk in individual or team shoes.
Your call to action
How can you apply the Transtheoretical Model of Change? How can you adapt this human-centric way to understand your stakeholder’s change journey?
My book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out my online course on Change Management.
Reference List
1. Prochaska JO, DiClemente CC. Stages and processes of self-change of smoking: Toward an integrative model of change. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1983;51(3):390–395. doi:10.1037/0022–006X.51.3.390