Sustainable Projects: Mastering Change Management
Have you been involved with a project that falls over as soon as you walk away?
We believe in delivering projects that have deliver sustainable change to your business, this is why we follow the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) principle when managing projects.
If you have used this tool before you will know how simple and yet powerful it can be. We can teach this principle to your organisation and expand on its ideas for improving projects - both new and existing.
If you are unfamiliar with PDCA then you will find it amongst the general 'Continuous Improvement' literature available on the Internet. PDCA is also known as the Deming cycle and it also leads us to why so many projects fail.
The last two elements are the Check and Act stages...
Many projects fail because they are not CHECKed for their ability to meet their objectives and subsequent appropriate ACTions are not carried out. By checking on how close we are to a result we can work out a better plan to achieve our objectives. When have reached our current objective then we need to consider how to properly close out the project - this could be standard operating instructions, a handover to another department, scheduling a time to revisit and improve, or something else.
When you are spending money and resources on projects you need to make sure that you are getting value for money and that the change is taking effect in the business and delivering the right changes. PDCA can help with this.
Change management is more than just a series of techniques, it also includes the ability to lead projects through the business, which includes engaging with the people in the business who are either effected by the changes, or are making the changes happen.
Strong consistent communication needs to take place as projects don't happen on their own, and people like to know what is going on.
The personalities that are involved with any project change the dynamic, and because of this the people (or ultimately one person) who you choose to manage and lead a change programme needs to be right for the needs of your business.
Smartspeed Consulting work effectively with all levels of an organisation and through their pro-active approach to communication and project involvement - getting the right people on board with the changes is never a problem.
We want to leave you at the end of the project with a sustainable improvement and we follow some simple principles to do this - including PDCA.
In summary, we use the PDCA tool to reduce a project's lead-time, to improve planning and communication and to ensure that a 'proper' project closeout is achieved.
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