adopt organizational change management best practices
TRANSCRIPT
Adopt Organizational Change Management Best PracticesDon’t let bad change happen to good projects.You are starting a project or program that will depend on users and stakeholders to give up their old way of doing things. In some cases change will force people to become novices again, leading to lost productivity and added stress.IT projects are justified because they will make money, save money, or make people happier, etc. Without managing organizational change, IT might get the project done, but fail to achieve the intended benefits.Organizational change must be planned in advance and managed through all project phases. Organizational change management must be embedded as a key aspect throughout the project, not merely a set of tactics added to execution phases.Agility and continuous improvement are good, but can degenerate into volatility if change isn’t managed properly. People will perceive change to be volatile and undesirable if their expectations aren’t managed through communications and engagement planning.Failures in change management would typically be foreseen if only the project/change manager has considered the full range of impact. Instead we hear, “I hadn’t thought of the multiple time zones as an issue”, “we didn’t realize that the pricing was different in the west”, etc.Resistance to change is commonly provided by people who are upset about not being involved in the communication. Missed opportunities are the same: they usually could have been provided easily had somebody known in time.Project and change management has traditionally focused on a defensive posture because organizations so often fail to mitigate risk. Good change managers also watch for opportunities to improve and exploit the outcomes of the change.Change is an ongoing process. Your approach to managing change should be continually refined to keep up with changes in technology, corporate strategy, and people involved.
