Managing Bites: Making Change Palatable

Debasis is a project management consultant in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

  Change Management  

This article is the third in a series of articles on change management, following The ABCs of Change: A Path for Change Management and Change Appetite: The Hunger for Change.

When a division, department or organization is ready for change—and has clearly indicated the amount of change that can be tolerated—the change management team has to consider how that change is to be initiated and rolled out.

The change appetite provides the outer boundaries that can be tolerated for the change initiative; rarely is that leap to the outer boundary made in one clear jump. The change management team has to consider how to get to the end of its requirements while keeping the components of change within acceptable limits for each step. This is synonymous to the size of chunks taken to fulfill the change appetite—the bites.

Understanding bite size is crucial to bring about change. The amount of change that is taken up at each step should consider:

1. The anticipated reluctance to the change being initiated
2. The number of people involved in the change
3. The number of levels that would be affected
4. Upstream and downstream requirements

Taking on too much at once would have an impact on the selected piece of change and the future pieces of work that are expected to come up. The whole change initiative does not have …

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