As I mentioned in a previous post, the more you hear and are involved with Change Management in your company, whether you are in IT or another functional area, the better. Why? Well, the liklihood is higher that you are delivering increased business value because of that engagement and focus. And in an economic downturn, more than ever, your business will be looking to unlock further potential within their existing resources and processes using methodologies like 6-Sigma to gain a competitive advantage and drive growth – raising the bar, much like the olympic athlete trying to beat their previous record.
There is a lot of talk about this in the blogosphere already. Once place to learn more about Continuous Improvement methodologies like Six Sigma, Lean or Change Management is here at isixsigma, one of the most active online communities in this space. There was a post I stumbled across which highlighted examples of where these savings are being sought in this economy.
What is Change Management? An example can illustrate the concept quite well. If you work in IT, you have probably been involved in deploying systems, software, or upgrades that have affected your user base in a real way. Have you had to “sell” the shiny new system or upgrade to those users? Try to make them understand how it will make their life that much easier? How they should not be “afraid” of the change but embrace it?
Have you ever deployed something and have the project, system, upgrade just FAIL miserably? At the end of the day it was the people, or a stakeholder with power and influence that derailed that “project plan”. Or maybe the project was finally successful, but it took longer, required rework, and lots of effort on the “back end” of the implementation that was never accounted for from a time, dollar or resource perspective.
In my next post, I'll talk about my favourite change management framework — the Kotter Change Model, by John P. Kotter. It's easy to understand, aligns with a lot of things you are already likely doing, but if you follow the process…your projects will be more successfull. And your customers will notice the difference.
We can all learn from each other…no matter how experienced you are. That is, after all at the heart of Continuous Improvement. So raise your hand if you have a story to tell.
My hand is raised, is yours? Tell us about it in a comment. What did you learn? What do you do differently now?
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