Myths
“Change Management is just a posh term for Project Management”
By itself Project Management does little to ensure that you deliver effective change – it simply ensures that the delivery process is effective. Change Management is a broader set of disciplines that enables organisations to plan and deliver sustainable change: a ‘joined-up’ approach that recognises that we work in dynamic organisations made up of real people.
“Our senior management team can do this change stuff ourselves”
You probably can – but too often this means ‘we can do this ourselves in our spare time’. The pressures of the day-job push the change work down the priority pile, and you ‘shoot from the hip’ on a project on which your business success and reputation hang. “The genius of strategy is in execution, not design” 1 – defining and delivering successful change demands the time to do the detailed work well, and knowledge of the pitfalls.
“Once we’ve delivered this project we can get back to business-as-usual”
To some degree, maybe. Things may settle down temporarily in one part of your business, but you can be sure that overall the need for change will continue unabated. So, more likely, you will have to start the next project before the current one has finished. Letting your people believe that everything will get back to normal is likely to be entirely counter-productive.
“The secret is to appoint a good project manager”
A smart move – but no guarantee of a successful business outcome. “The effectiveness of the project sponsor role is the single best predictor of project success or failure” 2 Using the right leadership style and understanding the sponsor’s role are key. If you want to deliver rapid, successful change, you or your team may benefit from specialist expertise and coaching.
“The Board is clear what needs to happen, so it’s all downhill from here”
Any initiative will fail to deliver the benefits unless people decide to follow where you lead. Leadership is important – so is creating followership. This requires great communication – and lots of it. As one CEO reflected “It seemed like we were spending a great deal of effort trying to communicate our ideas. But a few years later we could see that the distance we went fell short by miles” 3.
“We can be relaxed about when we deliver – there is no drop-dead date”
Slow projects are frustrating and expensive. Colleagues don’t see it as a priority, so you wait – and wait – for their contributions. The team pick up tasks only to be interrupted. Momentum never builds up. Productivity and morale are low. And while the project moves slowly along, the world changes and you have to revisit what has already been done. Relaxed projects rarely deliver success.
Sources
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Professor Amin Rajan – chief executive of Create (a research institute specialising in good practices in the workplace).
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The Thomsett Company, drawing on their own research and that of the Standish Group
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John P Kotter, recounted in ‘Leading Change’, Harvard Business School Press