What is the change resource problem? Two items came across my consciousness recently which are not difficult to link. The first is a set of lessons learned from projects in an organisation. An outstanding item of the lessons is the complaint that not enough people resources were available, or the people allocated already had a …
Tag archives: stakeholders & communications
Selling a change
How useful are selling skills for Stakeholder Engagement? Stakeholder engagement is frequently difficult. The change team need to get stakeholders engaged and often positively involved in a change for success. Since the power in the relationship often lies with the stakeholder it seems to me this is a similar situation to a salesman-customer interaction. There …
Is assurance the next big thing?
The next big thing I propose that assurance is the next big topic in programme and project management. I am reading more about it, customers are asking about it (though not yet for it!), and we have just finshed a new qualification for people doing project and programme assurance with our partner Aspire. The catalyst …
Keeping change strategic
Strategic focus and effective communication Corporate business consultants are discovering that effective management requires a continuous focus on the strategic objectives of the organisation.
Change Advocates — a good idea?
The idea of advocating change Change advocates both promote change in a business and help protect staff from poor change implementation. They do this by advocating the change on behalf of the business and being a channel between affected staff and senior managers. The role demands trust and respect from both staff and managers; here …
Avoiding Blunders
Blunder: a spectacular change failure A book I have just finished reading contains some excellent ideas for avoiding a complete failure in a change. The book, The Blunders of our Governments by Prof. Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe describes a series of major blunders by our governments. In each case a government minister set …
Quick, effective decision making
Good enough decisions Making decisions in a fast moving change initiative with deadlines and issues is very hard. Making the best decisions is impossible. Yet most managers in a change are hung out to dry for their bad decisions (with hindsight). A re-think about decision making and the culture around it is needed to improve …
How to persuade people to change
Persuasion skills for a Change Manager There are two basic ways to get people to do what you want: tell them and ask them. Actually, telling people is incredibly effective and works more often that you might expect. Tell is really the tool of the manager. I remember when I first became a manager (actually …
Communications: urgent or important?
The communications challenge On a course recently a participant offered a throw-away comment during a discussion on stakeholder engagement: “I find there is so much stuff I have to do that I don’t have the time for communications”. This seemed to sum up for me the way projects and change teams deal with communications and …
Using a capability model for organisation change
Change Capability Model We have developed a simple capability model for organisation change. The purpose is to better understand the nature of organisation change and how people go about it. The model allows us to explain what sort of training is useful given the organisation’s capability maturity (i.e. the level they are at). It also …
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