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What is the Value of Prosci Change Management Certification?

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What is the Value of Prosci Change Management Certification?

At least once a week, I’m asked about the value of a Prosci Change Management Certification. Prosci is an excellent option if you are interested in change management, focusing on the people side of change.  This article will cover the reasons people invest in change management certifications, why I picked Prosci, what to expect and the benefits of the certification.

What Are The Reasons People Go For Change Management Certification?

  • Learn more about change management models and tools (ADKAR is very popular)
  • Understand how to prepare and implement organizational change
  • Network with career professionals to gain real world insights and tips
  • Certification improves your credibility
  • Increases the success rate of change initiatives

Why Prosci?

Prosci’s certification is popular.  Research shows job listings cite Prosci certification more often than any other certification. Prosci claims that “80% of Fortune 100 Companies partner with Prosci”.  I took the certification because I knew enough to be dangerous and wanted to learn the best practices in change management. I liked how Prosci tools helped structure the chaos that change brings and helps increase adoption in an engaging way. Picking Prosci was easy because it was the standard at my company and I had a positive experience using the ADKAR process.

My Prosci Experience

I found Prosci’s training to be well worth the $4,400 investment cost for me in 2019.  The costs include training, certification, hotel and meals.

ADKAR

I use ADKAR to assess people or a group’s readiness. It’s powerful because I can tell where everyone is and track changes.  ADKAR stands for 5 stages of change stages: “Awareness”, “Desire”, “Knowledge”, “Ability” and “Reinforcement”. Typically, for me, someone is “green” on Desire and then goes “red” when new information comes in. Here’s a video for more on ADKAR: https://www.prosci.com/adkar

Networking

The training starts Monday night with networking and goes until Thursday afternoon. Every night we ate dinner together and then did fun team building events. I made friends and learned about all the challenges the other Change Leaders were facing, which helped ask class questions.  The events were facilitated by two Prosci members to help networking and events go smoothly.  For me, each of the evening events were not in my toolkit, and I was uncomfortable at first. One night, for example, we were put in teams and given a challenge to pick a recipe and make something with the supplied ingredients.  Since I’m not a cook, I took on the role of “mixer”, collected the ingredients and did whatever else the team needed. Here is a picture of our teamwork, we won based on plating and taste (though don’t ask me about what plating is!):

 

Class

The class starts early and ends late. Though the hours were long, I didn’t feel it.  The topics were engaging and we had our own project to work on that we brought to the class. I referenced mine often, especially the change management assessment charts. Learning by doing is very helpful for me and helped me remember the materials better. I also appreciated that the charts are built to easily add PowerPoint presentations.

Training Locations

Training locations are more like resorts than typical hotels. My hotel was on a golf course and while the rooms were not top of the line, the views were beautiful.  Hotel costs and food are included in the fee (alcohol is not).

Certification Test

Testing can be stressful and expensive for some test takers. Prosci makes it easy.  The test is comprehensive and open book. This test I felt was easy because everything was taught in logical, easy-to-follow processes. Easy-to-remember acronyms helped make learning fun.  For example, ADKAR is a very useful process for understanding where an adopter is in accepting or resisting the new change.  Using the acronym made it easy to remember the five areas (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement). Also, I never felt the questions were trying to trick the me! If I did get stuck on the way a question was asked, the Prosci team noticed before I did and would help.

It was clear to me that Prosci uses their methods in their teaching.  Clear communication, anticipating resistance and prepared to help us overcome it by giving us the knowledge and ability in an easy, painless way.

Benefits of Certification

Leaders need to be ready to address change. Change will impact a company’s culture poorly if not managed.  Instead of moving quickly, people will be unproductive as they struggle with the impacts and ability to on how to change. Certification enables people to understand how to prepare and implement organizational change.

Prosci provides a resource site that gives blogs, articles, webinars, downloadable tools and success stories for support after certification.  These resources are helpful to applying to change management to a projects or initiatives, when you need them.  In addition, you get a big book that includes everything learned in training plus additional research results that you can you use going forward.  I find it helpful when I’m researching a certain topic that I need to refresh myself on, like how to sell change management to senior leadership.

Certification gives you the confidence to manage change successfully, engaging adopters, increasing productivity and returning the benefits of the projects or initiatives.

Contact us to learn more!