Change Management – Economic Change

Planning changes in 2017? Reduce the risk of failure with a change management strategy.

In our earlier article in November, we reflected on the relative success of IT projects and the reasons behind their failure in CRM Implementation, a Client-Side Look. In summary, failure was largely dependent on how much people engaged in a project, and invested in its success from the top down to the bottom up, from inception through to adoption. It’s one of the reasons we focus on change management within our project work with clients and encourage them to take it seriously.

Ultimately the success of your project can depend on getting people on-board at the right stages of the journey.

In 2017 you might be planning to introduce new services, new ways of working, a new IT system or a new working culture that will affect and possibly unsettle people’s daily work.

For example, we recently delivered our Change Management Workshop to a number of charities who were either planning to adopt a social enterprise model, adopt new IT systems or change their performance management strategy in 2017, all of which needed a Change Management strategy to aid the success of their project. Read our Homeless Link Case Study here.

Having a change management strategy in place can be a key ingredient to your project, as it will logically help you to think through how to involve, support and engage people throughout the planning, development and adoption stages of your project.

There are therefore some key health-check questions to reflect on if you are leading such a project in 2017:

Leadership – [highlight dark=”no”]Are the leadership team on-board[/highlight] and all invested in rolling out the change?
Resources – [highlight dark=”no”]Is there adequate time and money[/highlight] to spend on introducing the new approach from design through to adoption?
Enthusiasm – [highlight dark=”no”]Is there a suitability skilled, experienced and enthused team [/highlight]to lead the project beyond just yourself?
Politics – [highlight dark=”no”]Who are the influential people[/highlight] in your company, and what are their views of the proposed change? The undercurrent office gossip can undermine any project, so getting the influential people on board is important.
Business Case – [highlight dark=”no”]Is there a well balanced evidenced business case[/highlight] as to why this change is needed, that can be shared with people?
Urgency – [highlight dark=”no”]Is there a looming deadline [/highlight]for change and adoption, and can this be achieved?

At our Company, we promote four pillars to change management – Analyse, Plan, Strategy and Change.

Analyse your requirements and readiness for change.
Plan and prepare your approach.
Create a strategy for leading and facilitating change, and finally;
Prepare for and embed change.

We offer a structured step-by-step Guide to Change Management within our e-guide and workshop, to help you to put together a suitable strategy to manage change for any type of project.