What does it mean to
be a
CHANGE AGENT?
PMI Symposium 2013
© 2011 Parallon Business Solutions, LLC.
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Our Challenge
In the world of business and industry…
• We have the ability to improve products, services,
processes and technologies with amazing speed
• Organizations need to rapidly react and adapt to
ever-changing external influences
• We understand more than ever what motivates
individuals
• Yet we often fail to achieve expected project
success because we don’t plan for
the human side of change
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Your Takeaways
This presentation will challenge you to:
• Understand the relationship between individuals and
organizational change success
• Recognize the relationship between types of change and
how people react
• Utilize a framework for facilitating individual change
• Develop essential change agent capabilities
• Apply key tools for creating transition success
• See yourself as a change agent delivering organizational
change
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Key Questions
Are you challenged in your projects to:
• engage impacted individuals in the planned
project transition
• develop involved and recognizable project
sponsorship
• achieve 100% adoption and proficiency
• address resistance
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Change Management Defined
Change Management is an enabling
framework for managing the people side of change
across an organization, through each individual.
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Recognizing Types of Change
Change Type
Scope
Scale of
Change
People
Portfolio
Transformational
Process
Program
Technology
Policy
Physical
Infrastructure
Operational
Project
Process
Improvement
Transactional
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Organizational Change Means Individual Change
Current
state
Transition
Future
state
Organizational perspective:
Existing process
Process improvement or elimination
Legacy technology
Enhanced capabilities
Separate organizations
Merged operations and culture
In-house capability
Outsourcing
Individual perspective:
How I do my job today?
How will I do my job after the
change? Will I have a job?
How do I sustain success?
Do I fit in to the new way?
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Project Management and Change Management
Project Management
Current
state
Transition
Future
state
Change Management
On the technical side, PM represents the
application of knowledge, process, skills,
tools and techniques to project activities
with the purpose of meeting requirements.
‘The change’—with the intent of improving
organizational performance, migrating
people/processes/technologies from a
current state to a future state.
On the people side, CM represents the
application of knowledge, process, skills,
tools and techniques to manage human
engagement and performance to achieve
the expected business outcome.
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Methodology for Change
PLAN
 Define
Change
IMPLEMENT
OPERATE
 Training
 Metrics
 Sponsorship
 Monitoring
IMPROVE
 Change the
Change
 Assess
 Knowledge
Readiness  Communication  Feedback
Capture
and
Culture
 Coaching
 Remediation  Best
Practices
 Design
 Advising
 Rewards
Strategy
 Industry
 Resistance
 Sustainment
Leadership
Management
Transformation Methodology
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Integrating Project Management and Change
Management
PM Activities
CM Activities
Initiate project
Define change
Scope project
Assess readiness
Plan project
Design change mgmt strategy
Design solution
Build sponsorship
Develop solution
Prepare change mgmt team
Implement solution
Communicate change purpose
Evaluate solution
Final acceptance
Equip managers/supervisors
Provide coaching
Reinforce key messages via sponsors
Design and deliver education
Address resistance
Measure and evaluate
Reward
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Change Agents Have Essential Capabilities
Successful Change Agents possess:
• Great analytical skills to interpret assessment data i.e.,
 When to use which tools and skills
 Scale of change
 Pace of change
 Client capacity to absorb change
 Tailoring approach to change
• Effective listening and coaching skills to lead teams and clients
• Excellent facilitation and mediation skills to lead and influence
clients through transition
• Skill to build commitment and synergy
• Ability to translate sponsor messages to impacted employees
and vice versa
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Change Agents Benefit From Key Attributes
Effective Change Agents:
• Are collaborative
• Are comfortable with ambiguity
• Are flexible
• Can adapt and pivot their approach based on need
• Can see situations and environments through different
perspectives
• Have courage to speak honestly to senior leaders/sponsors
• Believe in the project and its benefits
• Have credibility with key sponsors
• Are trusted by impacted employees
• Have knowledge of affected business unit
• Have successful organizational and personal histories
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Change Agents Apply Proven Tools
• Assessments and Planning Tools
• Change culture
• Change readiness
• Strategy Development Tools
•
Design Models and Methods
• Implementation Tools
•
•
•
•
•
Sponsorship identification and coaching plans
Team member identification and development
Communication plan
Training & Education plan
Resistance Management
• Sustaining Tools
•
•
•
Metrics
Monitoring and Feedback
Rewards
• Improvement Tools
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Becoming a Change Agent
• Develop your own change resiliency
• Become familiar with proven change management methodology
and tools
• View yourself as a multi-purpose tool
• Continually add to and use your capabilities
• Share what you know with others
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Steps to Transformation Success
Add the people dimension to ensure success
Use a framework for change
Develop Change Agent
capabilities
Apply proven change
tools
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Rewards
• Projects have a much larger degree of success
• Faster adoption of change
• Greater individual engagement
• Change success builds resiliency and change
capacity increases
• Change tools and methods have a way of
replicating themselves
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Be the Change!
“Do you have a project team delivering change or a change
team delivering a project?”
Esther Cameron, Making Sense of Change Management
Questions?
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