Organizations don’t change. People do. If you force change on people, you get resistance. Without proper change management, people get left behind in the change process, which contributes to project failures. In order to achieve successful outcomes, you need to focus on the needs of the people who are impacted by your changes, and guide them skillfully through the change.

Our motto is to involve impacted people early and often. Be transparent and keep communication lines open to avoid surprises. Include impacted people in discovery and solutioning activities, using surveys, focus groups, job shadowing, informational interviews, brainstorming, etc. to ensure their voices are heard. And don’t forget to include people in your success stories as well as reward and recognize them for their accomplishments in executing your change initiative.

To ensure the highest level of success, you should engage a change management specialist in the planning phase of the project. You will save yourself time and money by avoiding rework if you identify and account for key change components during the planning phase. The later you wait in the project, the more costly it becomes to incorporate change.

The change management plan is a comprehensive strategy for ensuring that each stakeholder group is positively impacted by the change initiative. Key components of the change management plan include: communications (and marketing) plan, training plan, reinforcement plan, and success metrics.