What do Change Leaders/Managers actually Deliver?

Change is not for its own sake, people are always the center of change and the very reason for the change.

People change for a reason; they must have a reason to want to adopt the change. The question to be asked is why are you wanting the change? What do you expect to gain from adopting the change? That is where the change originator defines their deliverables and benefits, in real measurable, quantifiable terms. But what is “Change Management” and how can you define its value?  What do change leaders/managers actually deliver?

The answer depends on the change purpose and mission: In a nutshell, Change Management (CM) helps businesses capture the portion of project benefits that depends on employee adoption and usage. In other words, it helps employees transition from their old jobs into the 'new.' Change managers, however, are fundamentally concerned about the human/emotional aspects of the initiative, which is very hard to specify in terms of deliverables, nor to show in the sequenced, predictable way the other project cost centers can. That immediately puts the CM on the back foot – forcing people to go into justification mode. As a change manager, you can successfully implement a change, but if the change is poorly defined and assessed, the change will not sustain. It is CM manager’s job to clarify: 

 • A top-down organization, on a stake defined by the adoption and the empowerment of users? 
• A bottom-up organization, to improve required tasks in a process, to incorporate new functions into the company, to improve answer time, budget, quality for a better customer service? 
• A decision-making process linked with the establishment of a Project portfolio supporting R&D activities, calling the measurement of a success rate on SMART projects and innovation projects (qualified by a number ratio of successful projects on all projects or ROI (NPV))? 
• The implementation of a matrix organization, project organization or composite projects? Good challenge! 
• The qualification of strategic scenarios in a process including a continuous Business Model simulation? 

The companies often need a set of deliverables so that they can justify the investment. Your deliverables are actually phases of activity, which act to keep your attention on the right places. Over time, these activities will progressively prepare people for moving to a new way of working. Deliverables are of themselves reasonably easy to describe generically, but will vary dramatically in applicability, importance, and workload to complete. It greatly depends on the nature of the project and the preparedness of the environment to adopt the change. 

* Project Alignment with corporate vision 
* Stakeholder analysis
* Change Management Strategy
* Communication plan, aligned to the stakeholders
* Business Impact Analysis
* Training and Education planning

Change Management goes beyond strategy and planning: The changes delivered could be incremental (Training), Transitional (Improving on a process) or transformational if it is fundamentally shifting the entire business model of an organization. There are significant deliverables that must be tied to all PLANS. Periodic assessments are necessary to track initiative-steps. You must show 'progress' as you go along. In addition, you must raise awareness to difficulties requiring mitigation steps to those in leadership (Sponsors). Business Readiness must be added to the deliverables as well. Business Readiness includes the readiness of Systems, Hardware, Testing, Training, and Change-buy in. These are all relevant deliverables of change management but are very mechanistic in nature. They don't cover the real value delivered by change management. The actual value of change management has three main elements that are facilitated by qualitative change management: 
* Speed of adoption 
* Ultimate utilization 
* Level of proficiency of the users 

From a finance perspective, the better the quality of change management program, the more anticipated benefits, and deliverables will be achieved:

-They know the cost of implementing the change 
-They know the value of anticipated benefits and deliverables. 
-Subtracting cost from anticipated value gives them a net anticipated value of the change if fully and successfully implemented.

What does a Change Management project actually deliver? There are both hard values that can be measured by dollars of cost saving or improving efficiency and soft values such as culture innovation and employee satisfaction. You must show 'progress' as you go along so that they can justify the investment. Your deliverables are actually phases of activity, which act to keep your attention on the right places. Over time, these activities will progressively prepare people for moving to a new way of working. Deliverables are of themselves reasonably easy to describe generically, but will vary dramatically in applicability, importance, and workload to complete. It greatly depends on the nature of the project and the preparedness of the environment to adopt the change. 

Posted in: Change Management,KPIs