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Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes PM. Podcast Today, I'd like to talk to you about one change management process, called A-D-K-A-R or ADKAR. ADKAR is an acronym for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. And this is a change management model. That is a very, very simple to understand that was proposed by Jeffrey Hiatt. He wrote a book about that, about this model and the central piece of this model, is on the human being. So if you change yourself, if you changed the person, the organization will be much more able to change itself.
Ricardo (49s): So this is the root. So you cannot change an organization without being able to change the people, so basically, these five steps that make the acronym start with awareness. So what is Awareness? The first thing you need to know is that you have a burning platform. So there is something that must change. So you are aware that something is not working the way you want to work or something in your market is changing that you need to take advantage. This is the first step without awareness. You can forget, you know, everything. Absolutely. Everything becomes irrelevant.
Ricardo (1m 30s): Then comes the second. Sometimes you have awareness, but you don't have desire means you know that you must do something. But you just don't want to do that. So let me give you an example. Let's suppose you are overweight and you want to lose weight. So what do you do? First, you need to have, awareness a look. I need to lose weight because if you don't have awareness, then you don't even know that change is needed, but let's suppose now you have awareness, but then you don't have the desire to do the sacrifice, diet or exercise. They say, look, I know I'm aware that I need to change that.
Ricardo (2m 11s): I need to lose weight. You don't have the desire. Without the desire, you don't move on change, so you need to understand. And on the design, it's very important. You need to understand on an organizational perspective is that people are looking to know what is good for them. What is good for them. So if you want as my boss or my supervisor or the head of my organization to drive me to change, I need to know clearly what is in there for me. Why is this good for me? So, for example, Bright Line, just produce on the people in a manifesto. One of the tenants that say, that people act on your own self-interest.
Ricardo (2m 52s): And this is exactly that. And I'm not saying this is good or bad. I'm saying that I need to improve. I need to have the desire to move. So what the company is doing for me, too, increases this desire to change or to make a digital transformation or to do whatever. Then when I have Awareness and Desire, I go to the third step, that is to have knowledge because sometimes you have Awareness and Desire, but you don't know how to do. You don't have the knowledge so you need to go and get the knowledge. So let's suppose that you're doing that digitization of your organization. So you are becoming paperless. So, you know, you are aware that you must go paperless.
Ricardo (3m 32s): You have the desire for it, you truly believe, and You feel that this is great for you. It will mean less work. It will mean more effectiveness. Less mistakes, but you don't know how to do that. So you need to go and get knowledge. Imagine the example of losing weight. You need to go to the doctor and say what is the best approach that fits to my body and my needs. Then when you have the knowledge, you go to the fourth step is the ability. Do you have to practice to do that? So then you start doing your diet. Then you start developing the ability to eat less or to exercise more or developing the ability, in your organization to become more digital.
Ricardo (4m 15s): So will you start developing that ability, imagine that or learning how to bike. So this is the ability. So you have the knowledge, but now you need to start trying that. And then when let's suppose you've for the first time able to bike, it's not enough. You need to have the last step. It's the Reinforcement you need the next day to bike again, the next day, to bike again. Until you have this is part of your new Changed routine, for example, you want to lose weight. How many times we saw people doing a diet, losing many, many pounds, and then putting them back very soon.
Ricardo (4m 56s): Well, what did the problem? It's a lack of awareness, desire, knowledge, ability? no, it's a lack of Reinforcement because what do you do once you do two twice, but until you do not transform that to a new habit, you don't change. Then it's very easy for you to lose the base and lose that ability and lose all the Change aspect. So it is very important. It's a continuous reinforcement process. So You Change, you do, you create, you develop the ability and reinforce, and this is exactly what ADKAR stands for. So it's a very simple human-centered. You can apply this in absolutely everything.
Ricardo (5m 36s): And this podcast that, that is very focused on a project and project delivery. It's exactly what we do every single day because a project is Per see, a change in process. So you create a product because the routine is not working so if you want to do something different, you want to implement something new. And by doing that, you need to change people and can only change people if they are aware, if they want, if they have the knowledge, the ability, and there is a Reinforcement process in place. So this is what ADKAR is one more tool in your Swiss army knife to be an excellent, effective project manager.
Ricardo (6m 17s): See you next week with another five minutes PM podcast.
