Business Change Management Frequently Asked Questions

What is Business Change Management?

We think of Businesses as having two modes. Get more information about golf betting sites. They have “Business as Usual” which is how they run, and they have “Business as UNusual” which is how they change. Change Management is a process which turns opportunities into outcomes. That’s why we call it “Opportunity to Outcome”, just like a Human Resources Team may call their process “Hire to Retire”. This process is sector agnostic, because it plugs into an organisation so that the people with the knowledge, skills and expertise can provide the opportunities and clarify what constitutes success (outcomes), and through the Change Management process we can turn their opportunities into their outcomes.

This process can operate at a micro level – a selected opportunity which needs to be realised, or a strategic level – translating the company’s vision and strategy into a deliverable Business Change Programme, which is the delivery vehicle.

What is the difference between Project Management and Change Management?

According to the Association for Project Management (APM), Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. Project management has final deliverables that are constrained to a finite timescale and budget.

A key factor that distinguishes project management from just ‘management’ is that it has this final deliverable and a finite timespan, unlike management which is an ongoing process. Because of this a project professional needs a wide range of skills; often technical skills, and certainly people management skills and good business awareness.

According to the Project Management Institute, Project management is the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to deliver something of value to people. The development of software for an improved business process, the construction of a building, the relief effort after a natural disaster, the expansion of sales into a new geographic market—these are all examples of projects.

OK, so what is Change Management? There’s a school of thought that Projects drive Change. To a degree we agree, on the basis that any Project which didn’t create any impacts such as to processes, people, systems, financials, reputation, etc. would raise questions about what exactly it is trying to achieve. However, we believe that Change is both strategic and tactical. Strategic Change Management is the methodology which translates opportunities into outcomes, and can be the missing link for many organisations who constantly wonder why they have a strategy to execution gap – why does the vision never become a reality? Projects and Programmes (clusters of related and often inter-dependent projects) are the mechanisms by which Change is delivered. They each have a designated scope, which forms part of the Change Strategy, and must deliver that scope to pre-defined time, cost and quality criteria.

So, we strongly believe that Project Management and Programme Management are a sub-set or Change Management, and not the other way around. There are many perceptions in Change, and they can be really dangerous which is why we kick off every engagement by helping our clients to see beyond perception and get to the facts, with our How2-Change Reality Check®

What are Change Resistance and Change Fatigue?

Let’s start commonly accepted definitions before we point out that Change Resistance and Change Fatigue are fake news. According to one Executive from a multi-national organisation, the accelerating pace of continual changes was beginning to take its toll on his team. They were exhausted. They were struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. They were suffering from “change fatigue.”

According to Prosci, who suggest that organisations use a proven, people focused approach to develop an agile, change-ready organisation, Change saturation occurs in organisations when disruptive changes exceed your capacity to adopt them. Your organisation is likely saturated when turmoil becomes the norm, projects can’t be prioritized easily, bottlenecks begin to slow progress, and project outcomes begin to suffer.

When the organisation experiences change saturation, employees begin to exhibit signs of change fatigue on both personal and professional levels. It’s easy to see why. Over the last year alone, people have been asked to adopt changes associated with remote work, new business models, new technologies, organizational restructuring, political and regulatory changes, culture initiatives, ongoing digitalization, and more. On top of that, virtual engagements and workplaces are creating an always-on mentality that can wear people down.

Let’s revisit some of the Prosci wording and play with it for a minute. If Change is the process from Opportunity to Outcome, why does the Prosci approach suggest creating an agile, change-ready organisation? Thats a start, but it’s not the full picture.

Here’s why Change Fatigue and Change Resistance aren’t real: Who wouldn’t be fatigued by projects which promise everything and deliver nothing? Who wouldn’t be cynical the next time there’s a proposal to consume time from busy people on what’s clearly a very poorly conceived project? Isn’t that actually the leadership and management behaviour you’d want from your people? Would you want them to blindly give up their and their people’s time on activities which will not provide any value?

When an organisation’s people are engaged up front to understand their perspective on how the organisation is doing, its problems and opportunities and the outcomes they’d expect from a potential Change, we kick off in a way which wins hearts and minds.

When we continue to engage and involve the people who are each organisation’s greatest asset throughout a Change Journey, we retain and strengthen credibility and secure their support rather than their resistance.

Is it true that 70% of Change efforts fail?

The 70% stat is often quoted, including by us. It’s from the Harvard Business Review and it has other stats which are often quoted too. For example, Forbes will tell you that mismanagement of Change is the number 1 reason why CEOs lose their jobs, and McKinsey research suggests that on average large projects run 45% over budget, 7% over time and deliver 56% less value than predicted.

Over the years since some of these stats were first published, human nature has driven various people to attempt to challenge the validity of the numbers. In many cases, their own primary research has actually strengthened the case and suggested that the picture may be even more bleak.

So why do Organisations embark on Change when the odds really don’t look good? What’s the alternative? We live in a world where Change is a constant, so really the choice is whether to risk extinction by failing to evolve, or whether to look at Change as an unending source of opportunity, from which the organisations which are tuned in, fit and ready to seize the change opportunities are most likely to win in their respective markets.

Here’s how we work as a Business Change Management Consultancy to ensure that our Change efforts deliver real value and sustainable outcomes for clients.

How do we engage our people in Change?

Great question, not least because it suggests that we’re not asking whether to engage people in Change.

We use a methodology called S.C.O.R.E. which has its origins in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which is a orm of applied psychology for Change.

Originally it started out life as a problem solving technique, with each of the letters respectively standing for Symptoms, Causes, Outcomes, Resources and Effects. We believe that Change should begin with the end in mind. In othger words, what are the outcomes which individuals and the organisation wants, and why? Then we move on to understanding the “current state” (how things are today), which typically includes a number of symptoms and causes (problems and missed opportunities). The information from these areas of focus provides us with our start and end points, a little like a Satellite Navigation system in a car. Those enable us to derive the scope required for Change, and to allocate that scope to a number of projects and programmes, which can deliver their scope to agreed time, cost and quality criteria.

When we run our S.C.O.R.E. sessions with members of client teams, we’ve had feedback like “that was cathartic” and “I don’t remember the last time I was listened to like that”. Contrast that with the experience in many organisations when it comes to Change, where the team will report being blind sided, kept in the dark, and frustrated.

We enjoy being hands on and delivering change, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. However, what really gets us out of bed in the morning is helping organisations do what may have seemed impossible, so their people can deliver exceptional results, enjoy their work and feel fulfilled. One of the ways we do this is through our Business Change Training, where we embed the skills and confidence into organisations to be able to lead and manage their own Change. This is part of our suite of offerings, as a dedicated and specialist Business Change Management Consultancy.

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