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Reading this unit’s articles and books about Project Management brought me back to several projects I’ve been part of as a learning professional. I was able to relate to a lot of the challenges, obstacles, and successes described in the approaches and models described, and even that projects will sometimes fail due to either time, cost, scope, or quality management (Knolskape, 2013, 2:40 – 3:42). In their book entirely on the topic of Project Management, Adrienne Watt describes that more projects fail (24%) or are challenged (44% as late, over-budget, not completed) than are successful (32%), but strong Project Management skills can help to mitigate these risks (2014, p. 13 – 14). One of these risk-mitigation strategies I didn’t see mentioned too often in our unit’s readings, but which I believe in greatly, is a strong focus on Change Management.
In my experience, Change Management in corporate environments involves applying many of the same strategies we’ve learned about in Project Management, as well as highlighting the importance of employee training on the change. In their article Successful Change Management, Oakland and Tanner (2007) define Change Management as involving strategies which support both “readiness for change and implementing change” (p. 1). In one particular software implementation project I led our organization’s training initiatives for in 2018 I had the opportunity to work with a professional Change Manager we had hired to help our change succeed. In order to prepare for the readiness for change, I observed this individual aligning with many of the best practices outlined by Oakland and Tanner’s article. She was able to identify who in the organization was a “project champion” who could loudly endorse the project (p. 3), as well as those who were change resistors; She then recommended the resistors become involved with UAT (user acceptance testing) so that they gain advance notice of the change and have the chance to change their resistance. This Change Manager also sought “management commitment” (p. 3) by involving our CEO in our communication campaign socializing the change to the entire organization (we had him hold a sign reading “I [heart] [system name]” and included an endorsement statement at the beginning of our training sessions). She also ran the communication strategy, ensuring employees were aware of the upcoming change and the benefits to our employees, our business, and our customers. Finally, she supported our organization by specifically supporting the training department, helping us address barriers we were encountering to completing development of training material, and sometimes running interference with the external consultants who were acting as project managers and not always open to answering our questions.
Unfortunately, this software implementation was completed but it was not successful and was eventually reversed during the pilot period. Although the project fell into the 24% statistic above of projects that fail, I think ultimately it was a good thing that this particular project failed. In their article Conway et al. (2017) describe how projects can sometimes face constraints when an organization isn’t ready for the innovation being proposed, or because it requires too many other complementary changes (p. 13), and that is exactly what happened in our context. The software we were implementing was missing some key features which were required for our particular business location, and it would have required many other cost-added changes to our business operations which didn’t make sense. The Change Manager we worked with through the project helped us identify these risks by listening to the end-users in the pilot working with the software every day and quantify the employee and customer costs of the defects. Although my organization hasn’t hired a full-time Change Manager for other projects, I find that I have learned tremendously from this individual and implement many of the same strategies she had used in my ongoing training projects with much success.
What do you think about the role of a Change Manager? Could you see your organization or context benefiting from this specialty role as complementary to Project Management?
References
Conway, R., Masters, J., & Thorold, J. (2017). From design thinking to systems change: How to invest in innovation for social impact. Royal Society of Arts, Action and Research Centre. https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_from-design-thinking-to-system-change-report.pdf
KNOLSKAPE. (2013, June 18). Introduction to Project Management. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOU1YP5NZVA
Oakland, J. S., & Tanner, S. (2007). Successful Change Management. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 18(1–2), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14783360601042890
Watt, A. (2014). Project Management – 2nd Edition. BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/projectmanagement/
Hi Andrea,
Your blog was very interesting to read; as I learn more about change and project management, a recurring topic that intrigues me is the idea of readiness. While the company I work for also does not have a formal Change Manager, I think having one could be helpful to the organization as they would be able to gauge the readiness of the employees when looking at implementing a change.
While researching our toolkit, I found some interesting articles about organizational readiness. The authors suggest that the leader (or, in this case, the Change Manager) could look into the different levels of commitment the organization members might have, which could help determine how the project’s success might go. (Weiner, 2009). So, I definitely see the value of a company employing a Change Manager!
Reference
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation science, 4(1), 1-9.
Sorry for the late reply Catherine, but I’m glad you found this blog post useful!
In terms of organizations hiring a full-time Change Manager I know this is often out-of-reach for smaller organizations, so one thing you may want to consider mentioning if it ever comes up is the opportunity to hire someone on a contract or part-time consultant basis. The individual I referred to above was an independent contractor when I worked with her; I just wished my organization had hired her on full-time!
A lot of the projects I see fail in my context, or at least not be completed efficiently, are due to exactly what you mention – stakeholder engagement and organizational readiness. I think that’s even more reason for a Change Manager to become involved with Project Management, identify these risks early, and help develop a plan to mitigate the risks!