Master Organizational Change Management Practices

PMOs, if you don't know who is responsible for org change, it's you.

Onsite Workshop

If you are a PMO leader in an organization that lacks a formal and well-defined organizational change management strategy for its projects, you are at risk of:

  • Executing projects that continually fail to achieve their business outcomes.
  • A lack of stakeholder adoption on completed projects.
  • Poor relationships with stakeholders and end users.

By facilitating a centralized OCM strategy through the PMO, you can enable:

  • The consistent realization of intended business outcomes on the organization’s project.
  • High adoption rates throughout the organization of new processes and technologies.
  • Improved alignment between IT and the business as well as stronger relationships with stakeholders throughout the organization.

Module 1: Assess OCM Capabilities

The Purpose

  • Assess the organization’s readiness for change and evaluate the PMO’s OCM capabilities.
  • Estimate the relative difficulty and effort required for managing organizational change through a specific project.
  • Create a rough but concrete timeline that aligns organizational change management activities with project scope.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • A better understanding of the cultural appetite for change and of where the PMO needs to focus its efforts to improve OCM capabilities.
  • A project plan that includes disciplined organizational change management from start to finish.

Activities: Outputs:
1.1 Assess the organization’s current readiness for change.
  • Organizational Change Management Capabilities Assessment
1.2 Perform a change management SWOT analysis to assess the PMO’s capabilities.
  • A diagnosis of the PMO’s strengths and weaknesses around change management, as well as the opportunities and threats associated with driving an OCM strategy through the PMO
1.3 Define OCM success metrics.
  • Criteria for implementation success
1.4 Establish and map out a core OCM project to pilot through the workshop.
  • Project Level Assessment

Module 2: Analyze Change Impacts

The Purpose

  • Analyze the impact of the change across various dimensions of the business.
  • Develop a strategy to manage change impacts to best ensure stakeholder adoption.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Improved planning for both your project management and organizational change management efforts.
  • A more empathetic understanding of how the change will be received in order to rightsize the PMO’s OCM effort and maximize adoption.

Activities: Outputs:
2.1 Develop a sponsorship action plan through the PMO.
  • Sponsorship Action Plan
2.2 Determine the relevant considerations for analyzing the change impacts of a project.
2.3 Analyze the depth of each impact for each stakeholder group.
  • Organizational Change Management Capabilities Assessment
2.4 Establish a game plan to manage individual change impacts.
2.5 Document the risk assumptions and opportunities stemming from the impact analysis.
  • Risk and Opportunity Assessment

Module 3: Establish Collaborative Roles and Develop an Engagement Plan

The Purpose

  • Define a clear and compelling vision for change.
  • Define roles and responsibilities of the core project team for OCM.
  • Identify potential types and sources of resistance and enthusiasm.
  • Create a stakeholder map that visualizes relative influence and interest of stakeholders.
  • Develop an engagement plan for cultivating support for change while eliciting requirements.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Begin to communicate a compelling vision for change.
  • Delegate and divide work on elements of the transition plan among the project team and support staff.
  • Begin developing a communications plan that appeals to unique needs and attitudes of different stakeholders.
  • Cultivate support for change while eliciting requirements.

Activities: Outputs:
3.1 Involve the right people to drive and facilitate change.
  • RACI table
3.2 Solidify the vision of change to reinforce and sustain leadership and commitment.
3.3 Proactively identify potential skeptics in order to engage them early and address their concerns.
  • Stakeholder Analysis
3.4 Stay one step ahead of potential saboteurs to prevent them from spreading dissent.
3.5 Find opportunities to empower enthusiasts to stay motivated and promote change by encouraging others.
3.6 Formalize the stakeholder analysis to identify change champions and blockers.
  • Engagement Plan
3.7 Formalize the engagement plan to begin cultivating support while eliciting requirements.
  • Communications plan requirements

Module 4: Develop and Execute the Transition Plan

The Purpose

  • Develop a realistic, effective, and adaptable transition plan, including:
    • Clarity around leadership and vision.
    • Well-defined plans for targeting unique groups with specific messages.
    • Resistance and contingency plans.
    • Templates for gathering feedback and evaluating success.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Execute the transition in coordination with the timeline and structure of the core project.
  • Communicate the action plan and vision for change.
  • Target specific stakeholder and user groups with unique messages.
  • Deal with risks, resistance, and contingencies.
  • Evaluate success through feedback and metrics.

Activities: Outputs:
4.1 Sustain changes by adapting people, processes, and technologies to accept the transition.
4.2 Decide which action to take on enablers and blockers.
4.3 Start developing the training plan early to ensure training is properly timed and communicated.
  • Training Plan
4.4 Sketch a communications timeline based on a classic change curve to accommodate natural resistance.
4.5 Define plans to deal with resistance to change, objections, and fatigue.
  • Resistance Plan
4.6 Consolidate and refine communication plan requirements for each stakeholder and group.
4.7 Build the communications delivery plan.
  • Communications Plan
4.8 Define the feedback and evaluation process to ensure the project achieves its objectives.
4.9 Formalize the transition plan.
  • Transition Plan

Module 5: Institute an OCM Playbook through the PMO

The Purpose

  • Establish post-project benefits tracking timeline and commitment plans.
  • Institute a playbook for managing organizational change, including:
    • Clarity around roles and responsibilities.
    • Formalized methodology.
    • Reusable tools and templates.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • A process for ensuring the intended business outcomes are tracked and monitored after the project is completed.
  • Repeat and scale best practices around organizational change to future PMO projects.
  • Continue to build your capabilities around managing organizational change.
  • Increase the effectiveness and value of organizational change management.

Activities: Outputs:
5.1 Review lessons learned to improve organizational change management as a core PM discipline.
  • Lessons learned
5.2 Monitor capacity for change.
  • Organizational Change Capability Assessment
5.3 Define roles and responsibilities.
5.4 Formalize and communicate the organizational change management playbook.
  • Organizational Change Management Playbook
5.5 Regularly reassess the value and success of organizational change management.

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