There is a strong interconnection between effective change management and project management. In a large project, there is usually a change management component – and there are a number of situations where the project is an organizational change management initiative. You use the same project management processes when you implement an organizational change management life cycle. It’s the same basic approach whether you’re managing change or managing a project that creates change.

Organizational change management experts will generally follow the same lifecycle that a project manager would. Let’s take a closer look at this methodology:

1. Initiation. This is where we define the audience and stakeholders, conduct change impact analysis and organizational readiness assessments. It’s centered around whether the organization is ready to undertake the change management project and committed to following through. At the onset of a project, people usually want to jump right in, but it’s important to nail down these aspects. The readiness piece is critical in change management and project management.
2. Planning. Again, this is the same in both disciplines. We look at key questions, which include: what is the change management strategy? What is the scope – whole enterprise, division, and business unit? What are the risks? What is the impact on the end-customer? What are the change intervention requirements? Who is going to participate, and how and when are they going to be part of the program? What is the communications plan? During this phase, we also work on recommendations for the execution phase.
3. Execution. This is where your plans come to life. You have your communications plan, and you create a training plan. You monitor and support the implementation of governance changes, organizational changes, process changes, and systems changes. There is another key element in this phase: developing recommendations for evaluation. This is where a lot of people tend to fall down. They execute, thinking that’s going to be it. It’s not!
4. Evaluation. A lynchpin of both project and organizational change management, evaluation gives us the opportunity to measure the achievement of change, the effectiveness of change, the cost and timing of change. This phase of the life cycle provides recommendations for future change management initiatives. Not only do we implement, we have to see how successful we were. What are the impacts? Did we achieve our goals and targets? Did the change cost too much in terms of resources or impact? Did we lose people? Did we negatively impact the customer base?

This is a lifecycle: as you evaluate, you may need to make changes to ensure the initiative is more effective. You have a constant loop in which you evaluate your goals, look at how you’re doing, determine what you could do better, and then do it.

Organizational change management and project management go hand in hand. In both cases, you’re giving your initiative a framework and providing consistency, direction, and processes for communication and measuring. It is planned, and therefore, has less chance of error.

Most projects fail not because they didn’t deliver technically but because change management was poor. An IBM study, for instance, found that only 40 percent of projects met goals for schedule, budget, scope and quality. The biggest obstacle to success was “changing mindsets and attitudes.” “Change Masters,” as IBM called them, or those teams that were able to effectively manage change, had a success rate that was double the average.

Without that ability to handle change, people don’t understand the process, or their role, or they don’t buy in. Upfront planning and assessment is ignored. We get caught up in the details of creating this new process or product that we fail to communicate what was going to happen, keep people informed, or fully appreciate impacts. By implementing this life cycle methodology for change and project management initiatives, you build a solid foundation for positive results.