Change HEADWAY: Verbal Hand Grenades: Words and Their Impact on Change

Even when speaking the same language, we all interpret words in our own way, with our own filters and supported by our personal or organizational context. We sometimes forget that others may define or react to the exact same word much differently than we do. In addition, organizations and areas within organizations may use and interpret the same word differently, depending on the context. As project managers, we don’t always understand the impact various contexts and these different interpretations can have on an organization’s ability to successfully implement change. As such we may find ourselves dodging verbal hand grenades – terms that can blow our organizational change projects right out of the water!

Change HEADWAY: What is Change Management?

As a project manager, you will typically focus on bringing the project in on time, on budget and to the approved scope. Your focus is making sure you and your team are accomplishing what you have been tasked to do given the constraints in place. However, organizations are increasingly measuring project success not simply against the on time/one budget criteria, but also against how much and how well the product of a project is being used. One of the emerging disciplines that project managers can use to assist them and really integrate the project's product into the organization in a sustainable way is Change Management. Change Management is viewed more and more as critical to project and organizational success. In this Change HEADWAY webinar, we will be examining the change management process from a project manager's perspective to understand how change management can impact all aspects of your project.

Change Intelligence Book Club Wrap Up Webinar

Summation of our discussions and key points with our author. All are welcome, please ensure you have read the book Change Intelligence

Change Intelligence: Use the Power of CQ to Lead Change that Sticks

Change Intelligently® Lead Yourself and Your Team through the A.R.C.s of Change and Crisis

As our gut-wrenching experience with COVID-19 demonstrates and neuroscience validates, unexpected, unwanted, and undeserved change can plunge us into fear/threat mode, causing the good stuff that feeds our brain (oxygen, glucose) to rush past our necks so we can fight/flight/flee, robbing us of the cognitive capacity to think clearly and creatively. During the stress of change, when our IQ inevitably goes down, building our CQ® (Change Intelligence®), is like putting our own oxygen mask on first. We remember to breath, separate our knee-jerk, fear-based reaction from a more mindful response, and remember that we have options – and the more options we have, the more power we have.

Change Made Easy

If only CHANGE were easy. We lead projects and initiatives every day and the odds that they will be successful are not in our favor. It is like herding cats. Evidence shows that incorporating Emotional Intelligence makes it easier to lead people down a different path than they are currently on.

Change Management - A Key Facilitator for Project Success

Many projects do not fail due to technical reasons. When project outputs get transitioned to operations and the resultant changes go live, there is a huge resistance from the impacted functional organizations (especially for projects such as system integration, process improvement, and enterprise transformation).

Change Management - Leading People Through the Transition

This presentation defines change and transition and looks closely at each of the five stages of one of the most widely accepted transition models. After explaining the model we will use an interactive exercise to identify leadership actions to help people move more quickly through each stage. Lastly, we will look at what the “experts” recommend for leadership actions in each stage.

Change Management is a Product, Used By Your Employees

When you think of change management as a product, you ask yourself different questions: Do people who work here know how to use change management? Is it simple? Complex? Is it obvious how it works? What’s fast about it? What’s slow about it? Are there bugs? What’s broken that we can quickly fix and what’s going to take a long time?

Change Management Series - Projects as complex change initiatives

Change Management best practices when the change is not Process or Technology but People