The Head, Heart and Hands Model is composed of three elements:

Head: The rational basis for the change. This element focuses on the broad reason that the change must occur. The reason should help employees understand what the company’s vision for the future is, how they plan to accomplish it, what the individual and team goals are, and why this change is necessary to remain competitive.

Heart: The emotional attachment and commitment to the change. This element of the change model says that change cannot occur unless all employees are committed and motivated to bring it about. In order to get employees fully immersed in the change program, consider communicating the benefits and pitfalls of the change, the manner in which their relationships or daily routines will be impacted, and what risks they might have to take. When employees have a deeper knowledge of how they will be impacted by the change, it will be easier for them to embrace something new.

Hand: The actions that must be taken in order for change to actually occur. Specifically, these are behaviors that employees need to be trained to perform or skills that they need to learn. Further, employees need to be made aware of how their jobs will be performed differently, and what support they will have to learn their new role. It is especially important to reward and provide feedback to employees as they take steps towards learning or engaging with the new procedures and tools.

Many organizations miss one of the elements of the Head, Heart and Hands Model when instituting a change management or transformational change program, which can cause problems with change adoption. When this occurs, one of three scenarios can occur:

Scenario 1: All head and heart and hands. The team has offered several solutions for how to address whatever problem plagues the organization. However, they have not given any thought to how to motivate employees to put these plans into action. In this case, it is advisable to create hands-on projects that employees can partake in or create a process map that will outlay the steps to bring the change about. In this way, employees will have a greater sense of what to expect.

Scenario 2: All hands without heart or head. When employees are given simple assignments that can be accomplished quickly to address small organizational problems, the results are often non-permanent since they don’t understand the reasons for the change or feel ownership of it.

Scenario 3: All heart without head or hands. This situation describes projects that senior leaders create because they are passionate about the cause, but do not have a plan or the financial backing to bring them into fruition.

Unlike most traditional Head Heart Hands change management techniques, Praxie’s online Head Heart Hands collaboration model and tools allow any team or organization to instantly begin working with our web templates and input forms.

Project Management, Risk Assessments and Process Maps can all be used to providing insights, data and additional support when using the Head, Heart and Hands Model. Praxie’s online Head Heart Hands collaboration model and tools allow any team or organization to instantly begin working with our web templates and input forms. Get started with our Head, Heart and Hands Model template. 

How to use it: 

1. Review model. 
2. Reflect on the questions to create your Head, Heart, and Hands strategy. 
3. List the strategies and approaches to change. 
4. Create an action plan based on your Head, Heart, and Hands Model. 

Our digital platform goes far beyond other software tools by including progress dashboards, data integration from existing documents or other SaaS software, elegant intuitive designs, and full access on any desktop or mobile device.