PM Insight
existing IT assets”, the governance decisions around investment in IT enabled
business projects are complex. But this
complexity must be addressed if we are
to see improvements in business exploitation of IT investment.
The inclusion of change management responsibilities within the IT unit
or alongside it is a possible solution,
but there is a real dilemma for those in
IT management in deciding whether
to include this capability within its
boundaries.
Change management is a classic
organisational boundary spanning
process. It creates changes in the
organisational performance often
working across traditional structures
with the end result being the removal
and re-stating of new boundaries – the
classic unfreeze-change-refreeze cycle.
Change management seeks to enable
departments and the people within
them to change themselves. It must
promote, facilitate and unblock the
change capability in the business area
rather than take over the change. Get
this wrong and the crucial element for
sustained change – ownership – is unachievable. You cannot “do change” to
people – at best you can do it with them.
This is the argument that underpins the
view that the real agents of change must
exist in and be part of the business area
making the change.
Change management as a discipline separate from business unit
management and leadership is thus
a strange concept. In the best case it
is a support mechanism for expediting directed change and a process for
growing change capability within the
business - a consultancy role – providing specialist expertise to grow and
speed up change capability. At worst
– it is another opportunity for business
management to avoid responsibility for
leadership in the most difficult of areas
–changing the way their staff work and
are managed.
You might expect that HR would take
the lead in such a people intensive
process. However, of the IT projects
areas I have interviewed for this article
all of them felt the need to supplement
or replace the HR change management.
When asked why – the answers were
varied:
HR is just not yet geared up to offer
consultancy support in change management. We think they might be in
future but we need something now
HR change management is about organisational development and is not
focused enough on the transitioning of
projects
HR doesn’t really understand the critical areas around benefits management
- change management must be linked
to benefits realisation.
We use HR on the change teams to support and consult on specialist change
areas such as job and organisational
structure change, cultural change and performance management implementation
If change management is to be initiated
in IT then there are a number of obvious
challenges. How can IT attract and grow
the appropriate change skills; how can
it position change management so that
it is not seen as another thing IT does
to the business rather than with the
business; how can it justify spend on
change management within IT when it
is so clearly a business enabling activity; how can it support and facilitate
business change and avoid yet again
reducing ownership and accountability
for change in the business?
In the desire to get things going –
many IT departments are taking a lead
in this area. All of the IT departments
we spoke with were developing some
form of change capability and were
aware that the positioning of change
management with respect to the business will need careful management and
positioning.
september 2014 — PM Africa Magazine
41