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.