You’re concerned because your organization is implementing critical initiatives that will significantly change your program services or operations, but the effect of the changes on individuals, teams and the larger organization have not been adequately analyzed.
Successfully adopting the changes is critical to achieving the business outcomes. It’s important that your staff, board, volunteers, constituents and other stakeholders accept and fully understand the changes; they need to know why they’re necessary and how they will be impacted by them.
Change management is a structured process to manage the people side of change; it enables successful transitions from the current state to the desired future state. A change management strategy states how people impacted by changes will be supported and efforts that will be undertaken to minimize the negative impact on them.
The change management plan helps people to understand how and why the changes impact their jobs. Engaging stakeholders by sharing information and getting feedback are critical to minimizing change resistance and will increase the likelihood that the changes are fully realized.
When initiatives have significant changes, I’ve found it important to integrate project management with change management. This was key to the work that I completed in State Street Corporation’s Business Transformation division, where I deployed projects in which it was critical to incorporate change management activities into the overall project schedule.
If you’re implementing an initiative that will significantly change your organization, and want to gain the many benefits of implementing a change management strategy, please contact me and I’ll be happy to offer a complimentary initial consultation.