Change Management and Methodologies

As Change Managers (or, as we prefer, Change Leaders), we are the ones who are supposed to be best equipped to lead change.

Yet, as a discipline or practice, how much have we changed during the past 20 or 30 years?

Back when we started doing change projects for clients – before it was even called Change Management – we pretty much did the same as what we are doing now. Maybe we didn’t have fancy methodologies and qualifications like we do today but what we did then is what we do now.

Is this because the concept of managing change (deliberate use of “manage” here) hasn’t needed to evolve or is because there are change practitioners and business leaders who firmly believe that following a methodology to the nth degree is more important that delivering outcomes?

This might be a controversial opinion and one that makes us sound like we don’t know what we are talking about. That’s OK with us.

But, having been change leaders (deliberate use of “leaders” here) for well over 30 years, we believe that outcomes are more important than methodology. We believe that the impacted people are more important than the impact itself. We believe that successful program delivery and completion is more important than making sure that the boxes are ticked and the artefacts are in place.

We are NOT saying that change methodologies are a bad thing – in fact, having a structure to follow is critical. What we are saying is that when methodology, protocols and documents are seen to be more important than the people involved and the successful delivery of outcomes, we don’t think it’s right.

Our observation is that we are certainly not alone in our thinking – but we do appear to be in the minority.

And that is why we have set out to change change.

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