Being immersed in the project management world for more than a decade, these past nine weeks have revived my knowledge of leadership, project management, data analytics, and change management. Yes, you need them all in leading change in digital learning organizations today.
My perspective of leadership in an organization that provides strategic direction, guidance, support development, and empowerment for operational and people success (Li, 2023) has not changed at the end of this course. While my top three leadership attribute choices were inspiring, honest, and forward looking, I have included broad-minded and cooperative as rank 4 and 5, respectively. In my context, many project managers only focus on the technical side of change such as developing and delivering the solution that solves a problem. I believe leaders would lead successful projects and change when they are also open-minded, receptive, collaborative, and responsive (Kouzes & Posner, 2011) to the people side of change.
According to Prosci’s Unified Value Proposition model, project management and change management have complementary disciplines that aim to meet project objectives and realize organizational benefits (Prosci, n.d.). The integration approach enables project managers and change leaders to work towards a shared definition of success, improves alignment of technical and people activities, and enhances information exchange such as the reasons of change and feedback on adoption and usage of the technical solution (Prosci, n.d.).
I am excited to integrate project management and change management in my current work environment, and the potential to access and employ the arsenal of toolkits created by my cohort in real work scenarios. It has been a great pleasure learning with everyone in this space. My next goal is to invest in my analytics capability as project management and change management are becoming increasingly data-driven in my organization.
References:
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2011). Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand It. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass. Retrieved from Books 24×7 e-book database. https://royalroads.skillport.com/skillportfe/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$564:_ss_book:43184#summary/BOOKS/RW$564:_ss_book:43184
Li, M. (2023). Leadership reflections. Megan’s blog: A MALAT student blog. https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0269/leadership-reflections/#more-437
Prosci. (n.d.). Integrating change management and project management. Prosci: People, Change, Results. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.prosci.com/resources/articles/integrating-change-management-and-project-management
Thank you for your reflection, Megan. I am interested in your work with project managers (PM), as I do not have much experience working with structured roles like this. You said many of your experiences with PMs had them focused more on the technical aspect of management; I wonder if most businesses are focused more on the deliverables of a project rather than the people.
Do you have a project in mind that you’d like to head or propose? Good luck to you!
Hi Terry,
Thanks for your question. Yes, I would say most PMs I have worked with in my current department focused mainly on the technical aspect of management. Mostly because of budget and time constraints. The PMs would focus on deliverables rather than the people. Most importantly, our organizational change management (CM) is a very small team. They can only provide CM support or service for the projects that went through the selection process.
I would love to see the CM team to expand soon so that more projects can be managed with a balance of PM and CM. My final assignment was about implementing a centralized training function for onboarding project managers. We are having a big gap in training and development in project management. I’d like to propose a smaller scale training function in my own department to start addressing the T&D and inconsistency issues the PMs are encountering now.
Thanks again Terry!
Megan
Hi Megan,
I enjoyed reading your reflection post! It was great working on the toolkit with you. I concur with you regarding the integration of project management and change management in achieving organizational objectives. How do you intend to invest in your analytical capabilities? In your organization, do you use a particular analytics software? For Data Analytics at my workplace, we use Power Bi. It appears to integrate extremely well with all office tools, such as Teams, MS Project, and so on. You can create dashboards and link SharePoint lists or other databases, as well as grant access to specific members of your organization. If you have any questions regarding data analytics please do not hesitate to reach out. All the best, Shazia