IMA's Implementing Organizational Changes at Speed Blog

Walk into almost any large corporation and we bet you will find at least one (if not more) of these changes in their change portfolio:  shared services, mergers or acquisitions, ERP/technology updates, customer-centric strategies, and other one company solutions.  These enterprise-wide changes can all be significant strategic solutions to critical business problems or market opportunities. In fact, “one company” business models can markedly improve customer satisfaction, materially reduce operating margins, utilize resources more effectively, improve internal collaboration, and position the organization to respond quicker to changing market conditions. The ROI is staggering.  But…so is the investment required! 

One of the foundations of IMA’s proprietary Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) is, “In order to achieve value realization, you must first identify the “human objectives” for your change." {Tweet This}  But what exactly are the “human objectives” and why is it so important to pay attention to them? 

40 years.  That’s how long Don Harrison, President and founder of IMA has been working in the Change Management industry.  While some may joke he started when he was 5, Don has dedicated his entire career to implementing complex changes in organizations.  His frequent application of this expertise to technology implementations, cultural changes, mergers and acquisitions, and business process initiatives has led to his popularity as a consultant and keynote speaker for national and international conferences.  Plus he is really funny, and that helps! 

Consider for a moment the phases of transformational change projects. Transformation typically begins with a core team that develops a vision of the future state. Over time, the team may engage others as it moves through the design/development/testing phases—all leading to the “go-live” or “cut-over” date.  These steps represent the installation phase of your program. 

As change management and project implementation consultants, we’ve seen our share of unsuccessful attempts at change.  These failed implementations happen for a multitude of reasons.  Most commonly, organizations just don’t apply the same business-discipline and rigor for managing the human elements of their change as they do the timeline, the budget, and the technical objectives for the project.

In our recent blog article, “Why Do Change Projects Fail? How Can You Prevent Your Project from Becoming a Statistic?” we quoted a relatively well-repeated figure that up to 70% of all major change initiatives fail. We seem to have hit a nerve within the Change Management industry. A debate was started about the definition of failure and why, if this fact was true 20 years ago, is it still applicable today? 

Most organizational change fails to deliver the intended value realization. Don’t believe us? Just take a look at a few of these statistics: 

How does a change management methodology help ensure value realization for technology regarding a software/technology upgrades?  On a recent call with a prospective client, we heard an all too familiar scenario.  Here’s how the conversation went: 

What happens when change overload confronts transformational change?  Too much going on, with resources diffused across too many projects-- if this sounds like your organization, you are not alone! The result is that in the rush to "get it done," the project team becomes focused primarily on meeting milestones and technical objectives, with pressure to not add resources that could affect given budget constraints.