Change Management Is Not 'Extra'

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  Change Management  

Change management.

It’s a thing. Many people will tell you it’s an important thing. Project managers need to pay attention to it. You need to consider how to manage change as well as how you manage their project.

In this context, change management is thought of as its own very special discipline, alongside of project management. It is its own specialization, with its own lifecycle and processes and deliverables and practices. Framed this way, change management becomes another process that needs to get overlaid with all of the other processes.

There are several problems with this. For starters, change management can be very expensive. The work and deliverables and meetings and reviews that go into change happen in addition to the work of doing the project. Change management expectations create demands for changes in what the project is trying to deliver. The team doing change frequently comes into conflict with the team doing the work.

It isn’t supposed to be like this. It should not be like this. The fact that it frequently is like this is deeply problematic and needs to stop.

One of the reasons we think of change management as distinct is because of how ideas and concepts get taught. When you name the thing, it becomes different. Because it is taught as separate, it becomes regarded as separate. Breaking out the work associated with change …

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