These opportunities for improving project performance come as no surprise. They are the usual suspects in most wide-scale studies, and they feature heavily in post implementation reviews for change projects in all shapes and sizes.
What would you do differently next time?
What would you do differently next time?
Better engagement of senior leaders
Improve change management planning
Dedicated resources for managing the people side of change
More personal communications with employees
Let's look at why these same topics keep coming up, and how we can actually do it differently next time.
Better engagement of senior leaders
Senior leaders function as change sponsors. They need to be engaged proactively to ensure buy-in among their peers and network, and alignment within the project team. This means that we need to seek out change sponsorship at the right level of the organisation, and enable them to participate actively as effective sponsors.
With the advent of agile change management, we may have found a Product Owner trying to fill the role of sponsor. Ideally, our change sponsors would offer more top cover from the level of organisational seniority responsible for cultural outcomes and budget accountability.
To engage sponsors better, consider creating a sponsorship plan that includes education about the project and coaching in how to improve effectiveness of the role. It's important that the sponsorship role encourages alignment around the vision and objectives of the project.
For more on project sponsor effectiveness, have a look at: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/the-power-of-a-single-sponsor-driving-success-in-project-management
Strong sponsorship is essential, and effective single sponsors actively engage their peers in a sponsor coalition without abdicating their overall leadership of the change. If sponsorship is on your hit-list, consider meeting with the sponsor earlier and more frequently than you may have done in the past.
Sponsors need to be engaged in conversations about the process of managing resistance with stakeholders. There may be organisational practices already in place, including workplace relations policies or departments. Having resistance management approaches agreed and implemented early may help the project team create more consistent messaging and build commitment for the change.
Improve change management planning
Change planning, including effective application of change management tools is often cited as being a candidate for 'could have done better'. This is because we can usually start earlier to give more runway for change management planning. Without sufficient time, we can find that particular change management deliverables (especially where systems training is involved), can be as large as a project within themselves, and yet no time has been allowed to research, develop, test, implement, deliver and review the key interventions driving employee adoption.
It's often the case that we can do much better change assessments including the attributes of each impacted stakeholder group. This can be improved over time by applying a standard change management process to all projects. This way project and business resources become accustomed to regularly occurring change management practices. Involving impacted employees in the change process from the very beginning is a fundamental change management principle, but it still comes up regularly as needing improvement.
Another practice that may seem obvious but comes up regularly, is the need to align change management plans with project management plans. For a deep exploration of this, have a look at: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/content-process-change-management
Dedicated resources for managing the people side of change
This seems to be a perennial on the change manager's wish list. And yet, it's a no brainer. Some studies put the figure at 50-70% improvement in technology adoption when behavioural change management supports a technology implementation.
When we consider the many reasons organisations implement changes, a 50% increase in effectiveness could be a massive multiplier to revenue, process efficiency, customer satisfaction, staff safety or whatever the original purpose of the change.
Naturally this requires budget planning and careful selection of a change management team (that would be engaged sooner than may be thought necessary). If change management is able to bring about an improved early adoption of anywhere near 50%, the business case for dedicated change management resources writes itself.
Earlier and more personal communications with employees
Communications are an oft-identified pathway to project improvement. Ironically we seem to either be doing too little communication or too much, depending on who you ask!
The potential for project and change communications to be criticised is very high because it's what's visible to the stakeholder community. It's important to remember that the communication plan is only as good as the delivery the project will provide. It might be worth exploring our detailed article to ensure you're not taking on undue criticism in areas beyond your control. https://www.agenciachange.com/post/beating-the-beat-up-resilience
Having said that, more personal communication opportunities are a top recommendation for improving the flow of two-way communication, engagement and buy-in to the project. For details have a look at: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/go-slow-to-go-fast
In essence, we know that posting to channels and sending emails does not guarantee our communications get through as intended. More face-to-face forms of communication can be adopted more frequently to build awareness of why the change is happening and to create the right level of urgency for it.
Consider building an engagement plan that enlists active involvement of middle management in personal conversations.
Take a shortcut to success: do it differently on your next project
We all want our project implementations to be successful. When considering what to do differently on your next project - or as part of your post-implementation review - asking these questions and trying out our tips should ensure you've got your finger on the pulse. We wish you great success!
Agencia Change is a specialised change management company that offers comprehensive change management and communications services online. For more: https://www.agenciachange.com/explore
댓글