PM Insight
substitute for leadership in the business unit. We need to be really clear
about what the role of the change
manager is... and what it isn’t”.
Gail reiterated this concern. “A lot of
people think change managers are just
glorified communications specialists.
While communications is often part
of the change manager role a good
change manager can be so much more
impactful than that”.
And Lise agrees “There is still a perception that change managers are
people who worry about all the people
things – if a manager has an issue with
his team or a performance issue then
we just ask the change manager to
come in and sort it out.” It’s crucial that
we focus on supporting change management in projects if this discipline is
to be valuable and promote beneficial
change.
Setting up a change management
competence in IT does have a number
of challenges – not least – how you
identify and recruit good ones. As
Lise commented “Every second person
claims they are change managers! They
are not easy to describe but you know
them when you see them. What I look
for is sensitivity for human behaviour
and emotional maturity”. This is reinforced by Gail, “...maturity and business
empathy. I also look for evidence of
some kind of structured approach.
I think without structure, change
managers will simply be regarded as
good at the soft people skills and will
not be taken seriously as real enablers
of complex business change. “
Is it working? Well – the jury is still out.
There are definite examples where success can be directly as ͽ