Chapter 7. Ready, Set, Change

Whatever happened to the IT Manager from Acme Corporation? When we last saw him, he was worried that the people in his organization weren't ready to make the change from UBuy to We Shop. To mitigate the risks he identified, the IT Manager decided to sit down and create a Change Management plan.

He picked up a book called Practical Change Management: Driving Organizational Change on IT Projects, and worked his way through the exercises. When he was done, he took all of the templates he had completed and put them together. He was pleased to discover that he had made a good start on creating a Change Management plan that would help the employees at Acme accept that the way they did purchasing was changing, and enable them to adopt the new We Shop technology.

Putting it all together – consolidating your templates

Like the IT Manager, you now have an extensive set of completed Change Management templates that will help your organization accept and adopt change. Take a few minutes to look back at all of your templates. Remember, from Chapter 1, What is Change Management? that the pillars of Change Management are all interrelated, as shown in the following diagram:

Similarly, all of the templates you have completed are interrelated as well. The information in each template has an impact on the information in the other templates. Review what you've entered in the templates. As you read through each one, think about how it fits in with a comprehensive, integrated Change Management plan.

Your Change Management packet should contain the following templates:

• Team integration

• Developing partnerships

• Updating job descriptions

• Designing your ideal organization

• Working with the Steering Committee

• Working with your Executive Sponsors

• Building your Change Agent network...

Top tips by chapter

Now that you've reviewed the information in each template and thought about how they all fit together, it's time to put together your detailed, integrated Change Management plan. As you do, keep in mind my top three tips from each chapter, explored in the following sections.

Chapter 1 – What is Change Management?

• More than 50 percent of projects fail to meet all of their objectives. A strong Change Management program greatly increases your project's chance of success.

• The Five Pillars of Change are: Sponsorship, Stakeholder Management, Training, Communication, and Organization Design. The activities in these five pillars are highly integrated.

• The Change Management team cannot work in silo. You must be integrated with the other project teams to be successful.

Chapter 2 – Establishing the Framework for Change

• Remember that people have both an intellectual and an emotional side. To help them adopt change, you must appeal to both.

• Help your project integrate with other departments...

Spreading the word about Change Management

You've read the book. You've completed the exercises. You're ready and able to implement a successful Change Management program. Before you do though, remember that one of the main themes in this book is integrating Change Management with other teams across the organization.

Taking the time to share what you know about Change Management with others in your organization will improve the change program by:

• Ensuring that leadership and your project team understand what Change Management is and why it is important to the success of the change, thus increasing their support of the Change Management program

• Helping others understand how Change Management fits in with the overall project, so that it can be better integrated with the activities being performed by the team

• Building others' Change Management knowledge so that they can help you execute Change Management activities

• Developing a "people mindset" in the team, so they remember that people, with all...

Summary

In Chapter 1, What is Change Management? I defined Change Management as:

"A set of activities and tools designed to help people successfully adopt a change."

You now know what activities you need to do. You have the tools to do them. Most importantly, you know that people, in all of their complexity, are the key to success.

All that's left to do is change.