In a perfect world, according to a Change Management professional of course, during discovery phases of any potential project a Change Impact assessment would be completed to help define in a budget/business case the type of change impact the project has on people/processes and exactly how much resourcing would be required to manage that effectively. And just to iterate again, that’s in a perfect world.
But just how often is Change Management ‘baked in’ from the start of a project's journey from discovery to implementation? The answer: not often enough.
The truth is, most of the time Change Management isn’t thought about at all until someone somewhere puts their hand up and asks a question about training or support and a whole lot of blank faces stare back at them. Usually, the ship has well and truly sailed by that point and everything that follows is a band-aid fix to get the project overline and those affected by the change wear the impact.
Naturally, we ask ‘why’ that is, especially when we know projects that have effective Change Management for the lifespan of the project see the return of investment sooner, benefits are realised and employee engagement as a result is much higher.
Depending on your experience the answer to that question, I imagine, varies quite significantly. Perhaps a bad experience or no exposure to effective Change Management in general is to blame. Regardless, there are many misconceptions about exactly what effective Change Management entails – so let’s bust some of those myths.
Example: An email to people letting them know we go live next week.
BUSTED: Emails and other forms of effective communications are absolutely part of Change Management but not the only component and far from the most important!
Sending a random flurry of email fodder a week before a 6-month project goes live to people who are required to do ‘something different’ as a result, is quite frankly, offensive.
When considering any form of communication regarding changes or project-related updates, a Change Management professional considers the best channel, type, and person to deliver the message. How often messages are being sent, how they’re being received and will even answer the tough question, ‘will people care’. As a rule of thumb – if the answer isn’t favourable, then the writings on the wall so to speak. The point is that effective Change Management ensures the right message gets to the right people at the right time. Mitigating the risk of confusion, hearsay and resistance.
MYTH 2: Change Managers just create PowerPoint presentations and organise events for the project.
Example: Organising a launch party on go-live day.
BUSTED: Although there may be a morning tea on go-live day, Change Management is not about organising fairy cakes and banana bread. Celebrating success is a part of Change Management, how that is done varies from celebration events, facilitating the sharing of positive feedback, promoting a big win for the project delivery and everything in between. It’s the role of the Change Management professional to understand the people impacted by a project, what motivates them and how they like to be communicated to and utilise that knowledge to strategise the best approach to keep them engaged with the project, driving adoption come go-live.
MYTH 3: Change Management doesn’t need to be considered during the start or middle of a project.
Example: Onboarding someone to run training in the last few weeks of the project.
BUSTED: Imagine building a brand-new top-of-the-line car and only considering at the end how people are going to operate it. You just wouldn’t, right?
Using that example but replacing ‘car’ with a computer application paints a very different picture.
Including Change Management from start to finish of a project means from day one your project is destined to be successful. A Change Management professional will assess the current landscape (what do we do now, and how will that change in the future), do an in-depth analysis of all impacted stakeholders (who they are and how much is changing for them), understand the training need of those impacted users (who requires the most training and support, what is the best way to deliver the training) as well as those timely communications we’ve talked about above.
To put it plainly, Change Management is just as important to the success of a project as it is to have a project tracker (check out our great application that has all your project management needs in one spot here).
If you want guaranteed success for your project – you need Change Management.
Myths have been busted and hopefully, some lightbulbs have gone off, my next question is - has your perception of Change Management changed?