Why Change

Change

In my experience people change for one of two reasons.

Things are going very well or things are going very badly.

While your business or personal life is running in the comfort zone, there is no pressure to consider change, without a damn good reason.

Whenever one considers organisational change I would suggest to first answer two questions

1.  What is the purpose of proposed change and what are the positive benefits we anticipate 

2.  Will the people who will deliver this change benefit directly from it.

Change is always about people and we better get that right first, everything else follows.

While working on most projects one invariably encounter reference to compliance, unfortunately compliance often result in even bigger disasters than having no compliance but a good dose of common sense.

This morning I had to review a project that kicked off mid last year, with compliance at every level, risk management plan, change management plan, PMO and PM in place, plus a host of planners and functionaries. I posed just one question to each of them - what do you think went wrong ?

Each response was different but in the end the only common factor was....  wait for it.... absolutely abysmal communications, everybody was protecting their "turf". Everybody was trying to score points and all the compliance boxes were ticked .

For me the repeating lesson from projects like this is - no matter how much "control" an organisation tries to impose, unless the "people" issues are addressed, your project has an excellent chance of failure.

I will leave you with this thought-

In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer (circa 1970)