I often hear that change management is squishy and I understand why people say it. Change management, particularly compared to project management, feels more ambiguous. Scope, schedule, and budget are easy to understand. People are harder to understand and much more unpredictable. Fixing scope creep, compressing the schedule, and managing the budget, while difficult, still feel tangible and straightforward. Dealing with resistance, acceptance, and people’s emotions feels more challenging.
This is one of the reasons why change management was the underappreciated (or underutilized) sister to project management for so long. One positive of the last few years is the increased understanding of the importance of change management and that project management alone isn’t enough to successfully lead a large change initiative. Both are critical, particularly when the change requires people to adopt new ways of working.
Similarly, change management alone is also not a successful approach. Change management needs project management. A change leader can do everything right from a people perspective, by helping them become excited for the change, bought in, trained, and ready to deploy some new set of tools. However, if the tools are terrible, if they don’t deliver their expected benefit, if the project is two years delayed, or if the schedule is crashed causing change fatigue and burnout, it reduces the likelihood of change success and thus the initiative’s success.
So Why Isn’t Everyone Using Change Management?
Part of the problem is that for small initiatives, project management and change management work together seamlessly. It sometimes feels like change management is just good leadership. Then as the initiatives get bigger and more complicated, the number of people impacted becomes larger, the more likely you are to see these two disciplines diverge.
As an example, a large technology change might be on track, but then there are development issues that lead to scheduling delays. Leadership says, “We have to hit the deadline, so where can we reduce the schedule?” The first thing to go is typically the training. Do we really need three weeks, or can we compress that? Do we really need to send out multiple communications every week, or would that time be better spent on development and bringing the project back on track? Because change management is viewed as squishy, those associated activities are often the first thing to get overlooked or cut. Project management is saying we have to push forward to meet the deadlines and change management is pushing back saying the people aren’t ready. I’ve rarely encountered leaders who are willing to delay projects because the change manager told them they should.
The primary reason for this is that change management feels squishy to those leaders. A change manager can’t guarantee that spending an extra two weeks on training will make the change successful. They can’t guarantee that increasing incentives and varying communication vehicles will increase the change ROI.
Most leaders agree they need change management, but they’re hesitant to pay for it or only want it if it fits nicely with their project plan.
So How Do We Build Confidence in This Discipline?
It would be helpful if change management could be summarized as 1+1=2. Or if you always do A and B, you will get C. The problem is that change management is more analogous to going to the doctor’s office than a math class. You have a bunch of symptoms that could be many different things. The doctor looks at those symptoms, understands your history and lifestyle, then makes recommendations based on their expertise. You try a particular treatment and see if it helps. If it doesn’t, then you try a different treatment. That is also change management.
A change manager assesses the organization to understand the current issues, uses their expertise of what has worked in similar scenarios or for similar organizations, then develops a strategy and plan of action to address those issues. The change manager will then monitor to see if the organization and the people are responding as expected and, if not, they will pivot and try a different approach. Just like practicing medicine is based on science, so is change management.
While change management may feel squishy, it is far from arbitrary. Just as we trust doctors to diagnose and treat our ailments, organizations must trust change managers to navigate the complexities of human behavior during transitions.
October 4, 2024
Author
"*" indicates required fields