Leading Change - Your Challenges?

I can think of some situations where the company hired consultants but they were serving the leadership that hired them not the entire organization. They were the puppets and number crunchers presenting some fancy visuals in the meetings and who'd work to please the employer and foster their own interest for next consulting assignment. When they came around to talk with the specialists such as FI, IT etc. these experts could easily point out how unprepared they're with regards to BU goals,company's mission etc.
They were busy in roadshows for which they were moving from one top hotel to another .at all facilities. Promoting a leader rather company mission and eating away into company's wealth.
There might be some OCM consultants who are really honest and takes a holistic look i.e. top/bottom management. Mostly the experiences I've observed they're promoting a project champion - this could be with/without his/her conscious approval.

There is always top management bias involved that can jeopardize the whole exercise and leads to loss of trust among 'others'.

OCM = organization change management

Hi Gina,
I would say Project management and Contractual literacy. The team leader must understand The basic Project management expressions and techniques and must be aware of the contractual obligations and rights.
I saw many cases where claims were time barred or missed the requirements documents due to not knowing contractual rights and obligations.

Hi Gina!

I'd like to twist your topic just a bit. I managed a company who's charter it was to turn around troubled projects, programs and operations. So we didn't have "change projects" in the traditional sense of the word. We went into deeply troubled projects and turned them around -- we changed the way the company was managing the project. Some of these were very large projects.

There were a few common items, these aren't in any order: 1) Poor management, not always at the project level but often one or two steps above the Project Manager. 2) Communication was totally lacking. Nobody said a peep to anyone. 3) Poor subcontractor / supplier management 4) A sense of fear in the workers to bring up any problems or issues. (related to poor communications, but a bit different).

So, or job became to change all of these things. We did very well at it. But, it's a stressful occupation!

Oh, and hardly ever was the failure of the project the result of the project workers. But they nearly always were the ones blamed.

-- Dave

Hi Gina!

I'd like to twist your topic just a bit. I managed a company who's charter it was to turn around troubled projects, programs and operations. So we didn't have "change projects" in the traditional sense of the word. We went into deeply troubled projects and turned them around -- we changed the way the company was managing the project. Some of these were very large projects.

There were a few common items, these aren't in any order: 1) Poor management, not always at the project level but often one or two steps above the Project Manager. 2) Communication was totally lacking. Nobody said a peep to anyone. 3) Poor subcontractor / supplier management 4) A sense of fear in the workers to bring up any problems or issues. (related to poor communications, but a bit different).

So, or job became to change all of these things. We did very well at it. But, it's a stressful occupation!

Oh, and hardly ever was the failure of the project the result of the project workers. But they nearly always were the ones blamed.

-- Dave

The challenge I have is building the case for slowing the change down! The senior leaders within my organisation assent to the need to improve the effectiveness of change projects, however, have been burned with previous approaches where results weren't delivered....A bird in the hand......our challenge is demonstrating the benefits of the change management process to actually remove the barriers later on which combined with the improved Customer and employee benefits far outstrips the desire to rush ahead and drive change forward without thorough preparation. Easier said than done!