PROJECT CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Change initiatives are time consuming and costly, significantly impacting an organization’s drive toward success. And nearly half of them fail. Since the reality is that change is unavoidable, organizations need to resolve how to successfully adapt and sustain change.
The success or failure of a change initiative is not just about initiating, planning, monitoring, executing and evaluating the project that will drive the change. It also involves preparing your organization for transformation, ensuring stakeholder buy-in, and engaging executive sponsors to champion and support the change before, during and after its implementation.
The primary reasons why organizations are failing—and losing money—are insufficient communications and lack of leadership (Figure 1).
However, organizations that are highly effective at change management, Change Enablers, incorporate certain practices that they deem important to the success of strategic initiatives:
- Having well-defined milestones and metrics
- Having senior management committed to change
- Establishing and communicating concrete ownership and accountability
- Using standardized project management practices
- Having engaged executive sponsors
It comes as no surprise that these practices are not frequently used within organizations that are not very good at change management (Figure 2).
Successful organizational change management requires a commitment to transform from what an organization is into what it wants to be. With a project management culture and mindset, organizations adept at the iterative process of change can enable longer-term sustainable change.
