Level up your change management model

Most change practitioners have worked in a model where they are attached to a project, and are responsible for supporting the people impacted by the project. This approach has definitely improved the success rate of major change initiatives over the last decade, but we still have a long way to go. I believe change management is required both earlier and later in the project life cycle than is currently the case – and this article outlines how to dramatically improve business results during implementation for minimal additional cost.

We know that when people understand and can see the benefit of the change personally, they are much more likely to adopt the change. However, with most projects, the change managers don’t have time to fully appreciate the impact on all stakeholder groups and are not able to provide to the level of detailed support that helps individuals be productive in the new system quickly. There is usually too big a jump between a project change manager and an impacted individual.

Therefore, for larger projects, consider a model where a project has a ‘delivering’ change manager as well as ‘receiving’ change managers for each stakeholder group.

Building Organisational Change Management Capability

Today, I’m posting the results of a productive discussion held this week with the Canberra Community of Practice OCM, of which I am a member. We discussed what advice we would give someone to build his/her own organisational change management capability.

I’ve structured our advice in five groups:

– About You
– About Change Management
– About Your Organisation
– About Your Managers
– About Your Work
– About Failing

Please let us know what you think in the comments! 

Self care for change managers

Many change agents join the profession because of a genuine desire to assist people through change. It can be extremely fulfilling work. A group of people, empowered through effective change management, can be the difference between success and failure of an intiative. To know you have successfully shepherded such a change can be deeply rewarding.

However, there are many statistics that discuss the high proportion of failed projects, so our chances of success aren’t high to begin with. While poor change management is one reason projects fail, rarely are conditions optimal for a change agent to provide quality work in the first place.