“But we don’t need Change Management as a capability. I just want to have us manage change well and I agree that we are going to see lots of changes in the nest 3 years” said Kim, the CEO. Kim was wondering how a conversation on launching a 3-year program addressing different parts of the organisation had morphed into a conversation underlining the need for CM capability.

Definitions first.

Change management is the application of a structured process and set of tools for leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome.

Change Management is:

• A process used by project teams to manage system, process and organizational changes
• A leadership competency for enabling change within an organization
• A strategic capability designed to increase change capacity and responsiveness

It is the latter two that is relevant to us to answer Kim’s question.

Reason 1: Increase probability of project success We have pointed this out elsewhere but it is worth repeating a finding from Prosci’s best practice research: With poor change management applied only 15% of projects succeed as compared to 93% with excellent change management.

Change management, and project success, in the above finding refer to adoption, utilization, and proficiency. If your culture supports a ” the only failure is failing to learn” philosophy then you win even when project fail – but most organisational culture need to address responsibility and “blame”.

Can you ignore the benefits of CM as a capability, if it can increase the probability of project success?

Reason 2: Who is picking up the cost of failure / rework? You are putting a lot of effort into ensuring plans succeed, risk analysis, energy and time being allocated to “rescue” projects-slips. Would you rather invest upstream to proactively address challenges to adoption or would you rather pay downstream to clean-up afterwards?

**Reason 3: What returns do you estimate for the case where employees adopt the enterprise changes at the earliest and customers face no hiccup? **

If we do have the Enterprise level capability in the organisation, we can “bounce back” quicker. How do you evaluate the benefits of the “changes” becoming business-as-usual very soon after being implemented.

What if you, and the rest of the C-Suite, had a common language with which to understand and steer the changes?

What if People Managers understood their role during change and employees “leaned into” change?

Prosci’s change management methodology extends and supports Enterprise change Management.
Enterprise change management is the structured and intentional deployment of change management across and throughout an organization. Beyond change management effectively applied on individual projects, organizations with mature change capabilities create an infrastructure to make the management of change an organizational capability and a strategic, competitive advantage. Institutionalizing change management practices, processes, capabilities and competencies makes effectively managing the people side of change a core competency and cultural value of the organization. Building an intentional and repeatable strategy for change deployment enables an agile and change-ready organization.

So Kim, the way we see it, Change Management Capability is a sustainable means to help your organization understand and embrace that your strategy identifies.

Call us and find out more about Enterprise Change Management.

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