One of the best strategies for gaining buy-in and support for your business initiative is through stakeholder engagement. By “engagement” we mean not only communications, but active involvement of the people who have a vested interest in the outcome of the initiative. Bear in mind, it is human nature for us to resist change when […]
In our previous article, How to Prioritize Stakeholders to Ensure a Successful Change Program, we introduced the Stakeholder Prioritization Map. Now we will explain how to translate that stakeholder prioritization analysis into stakeholder engagement strategies. As a reminder, stakeholders are individuals or groups who either will be impacted by changes resulting from the business initiative, […]
Stakeholder prioritization is one of the fundamental building blocks to a successful organizational change strategy. Too often, though, project teams get the stakeholder prioritization step wrong. Two of the most common stakeholder prioritization pitfalls are Prioritizing stakeholders based on the wrong assessment criteria Prioritizing stakeholders based upon input from too few people To clarify, in […]
Stakeholder resistance, if it gains a foothold on a large scale, can threaten to derail even the most positive change effort. There are four primary reasons1 that people resist change. Once you know what types to look for, you will be better equipped to spot change resistance in your organization. After you have identified the […]
Our previous post highlighted how companies under-invest in organizational change management when it comes to system implementations. Many excellent IT system implementations never realize the long-term benefits they set out to achieve because companies focus disproportionately on the structure and technical aspects of the IT program itself, and not on engaging employees in the process […]
A 2011 Gartner survey1 found that companies under-invest in organizational change management. Companies allocate, on average, only 5% of the overall system implementation budget to the change management effort. Gartner recommends that companies allocate an average of 15% of the program budget to organizational change management, inclusive of training — but more, if changes are […]
Successful change initiatives require strong committed leadership through the entire project by both the business sponsor and the implementation team members. When strong leadership is lacking, the risks are manifold, such as stakeholders believe the “wrong” people are leading the effort; leaders kick-off the initiative and are not seen or heard from again; leaders are […]
For many project teams, conducting a change assessment is an eye-opening exercise which helps them chart a new course for the project they are working on. At a minimum, the assessment provides the team with an opportunity to confront and deal with current habits, beliefs and practices around the cultural aspects of change. Tool description […]
Jesse Jacoby
