Change management - What is it? Does it make any difference?

What is change management?

• For a start, it's not just one-way communication like emails and presentations and some training, which is a common approach in projects.

• It's also not about making people happy.

It's about making sure the solution delivered by the project becomes part of a new business as usual.

And it’s particularly important for organisations that are implementing cloud applications to get good at it!

Part of the value proposition of cloud is continuous improvement. It used to be that you could implement a new ERP and maybe have a look at upgrading it may be 10 years later.

But now, cloud applications bring the potential for frequent updates and new features, possibly multiple times a year per application. The business needs structures and processes in place and an adaptable mindset so it can assess and implement these changes well and often.

Change management recognises that people don't really like change

• They might try really hard to avoid it in the first place, or

• They may subtly creep back to how they used to do things before their new ways of working have been repeated enough times for the change to become permanent.

And businesses only change when each individual impacted by the change has achieved lasting change.

In other words,

Business change requires individual change, but at scale

Change management is about making sure that

• each individual is willing, ready, and able to make permanent changes to how they work,