Change Management

What is change management and why has it been identified as a part of the Quantum implementations?

In their book, “Change Management: The People Side of Change,” Jeffrey Hiatt and Timothy Creasey, CEO and chief development officer of Prosci, respectively, write that “change management is the application of processes and tools to manage the people side of change from a current state to a new future state so that the desired results of the change and expected return on investment are achieved.”

Hiatt and Creasey point out that a perfectly designed technology that no one uses creates no additional value to the organization. Change management acts as a bridge between the designed solution and benefit realization (i.e., the results) of people embracing and adopting the change. Only after its people embrace and adopt the change will an organization truly achieve the successful outcome it desires. Hiatt's and Creasey’s foundational tenets for change management are:

We change for a reason

• Organizational change requires individual change.
• Organizational outcomes are the collective result of individual change.
• Change management is an enabling framework for managing the people side of change.
• We apply change management to realize the benefits and desired outcomes of change.

Change management efforts may be identified and designed by change management professionals, but they are executed by many people across the organization working toward the objectives of the change. It is the achievement of those objectives that is used to measure the effectiveness of the change management efforts.

Therefore, change management has been identified as a specific part of the Quantum implementation projects because achievement of project objectives is critical, and research shows that projects with excellent change management effectiveness are six times more likely to meet or exceed project objectives.