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A Manager’s Guide to Managing Change: Assessing Impact (Step II)

***Is your project on the path to success or to becoming one of the many that fail to achieve the expected benefits?***

Step One, Shared Vision, was the focus of my previous article. We will now shift our focus to Step Two: Understanding the Full Change Impact to the Organization

Have you identified the degree and type of changes required to realize your project’s benefits?

If not, how can people be prepared when you haven’t determined what type of change to prepare them for?

There is no such thing as a “small” change. Change has a ripple effect that is often underestimated. A change in technology will require a change in process that will affect how and where work is done.

A Manager’s Guide to Managing Change: Checklist for Success (Step III)

Effectively Engaging Stakeholders

The third step on the path to success is to effectively engage stakeholders. A stakeholder is anyone who will experience change because of your project or who has the ability to influence the outcome of your project. The keywords here are impact and influence.

The Impact Assessment, described in Step 2, is a tool to identify the type and degree of change and the areas and individuals affected. You can identify the high influence stakeholders by asking who has the power – whether formal or informal – to prevent your project from achieving success. Your Stakeholder Engagement Plan established the timeline, defines key objectives and describes the approach to involving the high impact/high influence stakeholders throughout the project.

Communication alone is not sufficient to achieve the level of support and preparation high impact/high influence stakeholders require for your project to be successful. Engaging the right stakeholders at the right time in the right way creates an opportunity for them to take ownership of the outcome. They become part of what is happening instead of an observer or a victim of what will be different. We are less likely to resist what we have a voice in creating.

‘I Want Things to be Better. I Just Don’t Want Anything to Change.’

What we’re really saying is “I want to experience the benefits of change without experiencing the disruption of change.”

And, who wouldn’t?

When confronted with the reality that achieving what we desire requires more changes than we are ready or willing to make, we often choose the status quo.

I’ve had many projects launched on a giant wave of unrealistic expectations about how much better life will be once the change is implemented, only to come crashing down when the reality of the impact of changes required to realize the expected benefits becomes known.

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Effectively Engaging Stakeholders

Sharing is caring!

Sharing is caring!