Carry Out Change
Management
International projects often involve change. People tend to
resist change. However, if there is no change, then the results of the project
may either be failure or a lack of benefits. Change management often goes hat in
hand with project management.
You must first get the people who will be using the results of the
project to admit that the way they do their work now is not good and has
problems. This is consistent with drug and alcohol addiction in which the person
must first admit that they have a problem. Once they admit that they have
problems, then they are on the road to a cure. It is the same in international
projects. If people don’t feel that they need to change, then they will resist
using the results of the project. After the project is turned over, they may
just return to their old ways!! It has happened many times.
How do you accomplish this? Early in the project, you must analyze
the situation that the project is to address. Get people involved to talk about
their work and problems. As they discuss their problems, they will begin to
wonder if the problems cannot be fixed. This will start to give you support for
change.
Later you will likely run into another barrier to change. People
will say that many efforts have been tried before, but that there have been no
real lasting improvements. They lack confidence that you can deliver results.
What should you do in this situation? A possible answer is to implement
improvements that lead up to the final project results. This approach is called
Quick Hits or Quick Wins. The basic idea is
that implementing the project results is too traumatic in one step and it may be
too long so that people lose both confidence and interest. The alternative is to
implement several waves of changes or Quick Hits that yield benefits, raise
confidence, and prepare the way for the results of the project.
Figure 7.3 compares
the Quick Win and traditional approaches. In this figure there are two solid
lines for the Big Bang and two dotted lines for Quick Hits. One line shows the
implementation method. The other shows confidence in the project. In the Quick
Hit approach confidence builds. In the Big Bang graph confidence increases, but
then declines because nothing is happening.
Of course, not all projects are amenable to Quick Wins. However,
changing processes, implementing new systems, and putting in new policies do fit
within this. Care must be taken when using this approach.
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The changes that you make must be consistent with the
results of the project. Otherwise, they will have to be reversed or
undone—causing more problems.
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Care must be taken to ensure that the project does not get
sidetracked into just doing Quick Hits.
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Management may want to stop with the Quick Hits. Be on guard
for this.
Nevertheless, this is a useful way to introduce change that
is an alternative to the “big bang” approach followed in many cases.
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