Change Management Advice for Project Managers
Every project brings a change.
Companies rely on project managers to bring projects to completion, and in doing so, bring change to the organization through their work.
It is important to remember that Project Managers (PMs) and Change Managers (CMs) tend to view their work through a different lens. PMs are looking at project quality, constrained by scope, cost and time. CM’s are looking at project realization through people, change impact, and adoption.
Another way to look at this is that PMs are meant to bring the completion of milestones, on time and on budget. Change Managers are meant to bring the realization of the change, adoption, and long-term benefits. These are two distinctly different things. One is implementation, the other is long-term value of the change through adoption.
For example, you can implement a software solution, but if it does not solve user issues, or creates more work, users will not adopt the solution. In short, you can meet schedule, cost, and scope, (PM expectations) but never realize the benefits (change realization expectations).
To bring both implementation and realization of a project, companies may employ both project managers and change managers. It is typical to bring both disciplines for larger or more impactful projects. For smaller projects, PM’s sometimes take on the responsibilities of both roles, implementation, and realization.
Realizing the benefits of a project is not confined to large projects; even the smallest project will bring benefits that an organization wants to see embedded over time. While projects have a PM and project team managing the work and may not have someone wearing the change management hat at the table, there is the expectation that the project will bring about change benefits, nonetheless. Therefore, we need to ask the question, “How we can equip PM’s so that their projects meet scope, cost, timelines…. and benefit realization?”
Here are two suggestions.
First, if you are working within a PM methodology and CM methodology, make it easy on yourself. Integrate the change activities into your project planning. Do not get lost in a 3-step, 4-step or 8-step change methodology or framework. Just look at the change-related activities that need to occur (think engagement and communication) and build those into your project plan. Change management purists may not love you for it, but it will get the job done.
Second, if you do not have change management support, there are basic change management elements you can build into your project planning (see below) that will work across any engagement and fit within your PM approach (e.g., waterfall, agile).
As a PM, the key is to honestly review your project to see if these elements are included. These are the basic activities that must be in place if you are looking to create long term adoption and realization of benefits of the change. If they are missing, then build them in. Here they are:
Know where you are going: Some call this awareness. To put a finer point on it, you need to know your current state, your future state and why and how you are going to accomplish the feat. This is to provide some level of certainty to the impacted stakeholders, so they know what to expect and why.
Get leaders are on board, aligned and talking: So many articles and lessons learned documents discuss this that it seems silly to talk about, but guess what? The consistent issue with project completion and realization is leader sponsorship. To really sponsor an initiative, the sponsor needs to be a credible leader within the organization, and they need to talk about the change a lot; at coffee breaks, at lunch, at dinner, town halls, 1:1’s etc. Leaders need to embrace the change all the time. It sounds over the top, but when leaders really embrace the change, those looking up to them do too.
Measures of success identified and published: This is the most underrated but potentially most essential element of any project or program. You need a measure of success. When you have one, you can record progress. You can make future informed decisions and you can course correct as needed. As an added benefit, results of measures give leaders and sponsors something to talk about, and discuss with others what is working, what is not working and what the expectations are. Measures are super important and often overlooked.
Education materials created / deployed: Every change brings new learning. Depending on your organization, that training may be formal training or something less. It may be just a guide that explains how to move through a process. These materials need to be defined and built to support the change.
Reward system (formal / informal) in place: If there is a change, you can reinforce the change with a recognition system. If one does not exist — make one!!! It does not need to be expensive; it can be as simple as a pat on the back, a refreshment, an acknowledgement. The main point is that within the project there is a need to build a mechanism to recognize people doing the right thing. This reinforces the change and the correct behaviors.
Impacted people are involved and have easy access to the change: This is often the most excused and overlooked element of good change adoption. Oftentimes, there is a fear that having too many people involved early in the project will slow it down. What follows is that project teams build projects without SME’s or with too few SME’s. When the real users see the results, they push back on the program. It is always best to spend time building the right team of SMEs to support the project. And move inclusion up front so that everyone who needs to be involved is involved at the beginning. Early SME involvement speeds up implementation and shortens overall timeline to adoption.
The change is communicated: This one is easy and hard. Communication typically shows up in the top 3 of issues of any project. Either the project team communicated too little, or they overdid it and communicated too much. While over-communicating can get tedious, the communication sin is to under-communicate. If you are going to err, err on the side of overcommunicating. That way the biggest danger is that stakeholders hear too much about the project, not too little.
Project Managers, this can be your change quick reference change guide. If you can’t bring a Change Manager on to your team, make sure you have change activities built into your project plans. Review your projects and ensure the above change elements are incorporated. If they are not and you cannot build them in, include them in your risk log. And if you need support, ask to get a change manager on your project.
