Planning Ahead of the Chaos of Change
From the Eye on the Workforce Blog
by Joe Wynne
Workforce management is a key part of project success, but project managers often find it difficult to get trustworthy information on what really works. From interpersonal interactions to big workforce issues we'll look the latest research and proven techniques to find the most effective solutions for your projects.
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Categories
Artificial Intelligence,
Benefits Realization,
Career Development,
Change Management,
Communications Management,
Complexity,
Decision Making,
Employee Engagement,
HR Mgmt,
Innovation,
Leadership,
Learning,
Manage People,
Organizational Culture,
Performance Improvement,
Recruiting,
Risk Management,
Robotic Process Automation,
Schedule Management,
Stakeholder Management,
Teams,
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Date
If your upcoming project is one of those business transformative roller coasters, then you should be forgiven if you feel a little anxious about how to plan for it. What special communication tactics should be included? What assumptions for timing of activities are relevant? Heck, who are the additional stakeholders that must be established as partners?
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Specifics of the situation can guide you. Here are some examples:
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If the stakes are high, bring in many support stakeholders (from HR, corporate communications, business side middle managers, legal, etc.) to meet with IT leaders to plan a change management strategy. An IT leader should actually be invited to an initial meeting by the sponsor of the change making this easier.
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If the degree of resistance is expected to be high, plan to include positive but coercive management tactics and transition subgroups into the newly transformed business over time.
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If the population effected is large, then have many stakeholders plan for a complex change management strategy, including all the party tricks: incentives and information flow, training on new objectives/processes, authoritarian-style pronouncements and sanctions, and gradual transitioning of groups to the new way.
Change management is complex and commonly a part of IT efforts, yet it is rarely part of the IT organization’s expertise. Bringing in the right stakeholders in the planning stage can fill this gap and reduce the potential chaos.
Posted on: April 04, 2008 08:27 AM |
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Comments (1)
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Jaime Taylor
Senior Project Manager| Navitor Inc.
Saint Peter, Mn, United States
I am, right now, at the moment in time of a project where I need to plan for the impact of change that the project will have on our organization. We all know that the impact will be big and that no employee will escape its reach.
What I would like to do now in advance of laying out the Change Management Strategy and subsequent executable plan, is to measure the readiness of each area of the business. I believe this will give my team the insight needed to determine where to spend their time on what and to what degree they need to dive in for each area.
I don't believe a blanket approach would be wise in this case but a more specific plan per area of the business based on results from a well designed survey or other information gathering tool.
The problem is, I don't know of such a tool. Does anyone have a tool for discovering an organization's readiness for change ether as a result of efforts to date or as a baseline tool? If someone could point me in a direction here that would be very helpful.
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