Using Communications As An Agent of Organizational Change: Applying The Principles Of Made To Stick

Thinking back to your last process implementation project, surely there were many challenges and times perhaps when you weren’t sure if the project would succeed or fail. Doing the necessary amount of planning, naturally you found the right resources that would make the project successful. You identified risks and developed the right mitigation strategies. You performed all the right project management tasks; however, project success was sitting on the fence – not because the project hadn’t been well managed, but due to a substantial factor that most, if not all, process projects face.

The greatest challenge that Pink Elephant’s consultants have found with process projects is not necessarily all the hard work that goes into planning the project, doing the process design, testing that design, configuring the tool and planning for implementation. At the end of the day, the greatest challenge is changing the behavior of our fellow associates.

The change issue really boils down to the fact that people in your organization are being asked to do something very different from what they have done in the past – which they were very successful at doing. There is also the perception, right or wrong, that implementing process will impinge on individual creativity or initiative. If we multiply the individual concerns across the organization, the issue becomes culture change. So, when the process project team “shows up” one day with a new way of working – it is quite certain the organization will push back. No one likes surprises, and much less surprises about the way someone is asked to do their job.