Canadian Forest Service

NRCan-scaled (2) (1)

Canadian Forest Service Change Management Decision Tool and Approach 2022-23

The Canadian Forest Service (CFS) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) use gigabytes of data daily, but a bottleneck is created by a surplus of data and a lack of data scientists. As a result, a large percentage of that data is not utilized. Data is crucial to CFS/NRCan’s strategy; therefore, every employee must be able to use it accordingly. Data is at the core of what NRCan does, but the Department needs to enhance and promote a data culture to ensure its effective utilization. The key enabler of data culture is data literacy. The readiness for change management is vastly different among many organizations – one size will not fit all. Yet the processes and results must be integrated. In the change management handbook, there are seven different approaches to change management that a consultant like Mr. Chapman can take. The approaches vary to best accomplish the needs of vastly different organizations.

Regardless of the complexity, all change management initiatives follow a generic process:

  1. Change Management Triage
  2. Change Strategy
  3. Change Definition Checklist
  4. Stakeholder Mapping
  5. Readiness Assessment
  6. Workforce Management
  7. Performance Indicators (Outcomes Realization Plan)
  8. Lessons Learned 

Jamie Chapman summarizes this approach by posing the question: Is the NRCan Data Culture Enablement Project a simple or complex change management initiative? NRCan must choose the appropriate processes for each step in the generic change management process in order to implement the transformation.