A clear understanding of the key roles in a programme of change management is a vital and often overlooked aspect of successful strategies for managing change. It matters because a successful change initiative really does result from a clear understanding of the key roles that are needed to make it possible.Regardless of the size of your organisation and whatever approach you are adopting, there are clear lessons to be learned and benefited from the programme management based approach to running a step change initiative.In the organisation structure of a programme based approach there are three primary roles:(1) In any change initiative someone has to fulfill the role of leadership and needs to be seen to be consistently the driving force throughout the initiative. That person also needs to be ultimately accountability for the change initiative. In a programme this will be the Programme Director.The Programme Director owns the programme and therefore is ultimately personally accountable for the success of the Programme. So this is not simply a titular role, the individual appointed must be empowered to direct the Programme effectively – capable of doing so – and seen to be doing so.Without this role being fulfilled – it just simply will not happen!(2) The second role is fairly commonly understood – the person with responsibility for day-to-day management of the initiative, its risks, issues, conflicts, priorities, communications, and ensuring delivery of the new capabilities.However, what is not so commonly understood is that this role is more – far more -than that of a project manager.In a programme this is the Programme Manager. This role has responsibility for the wider dimensions of the change initiative – particularly the management of the people impacts and all other broader strategic and operational aspects that have a bearing on the ultimate success of the initiative.(3) The third role is less often fulfilled outside of programme management circles. This is the role with responsibility for actually realising [or achieving] the organisational benefits of the step change initiative – namely the Business Change Manager.[N.B. This role within a programme management context is not to be confused with the business process improvement focus of a business change manager in a company with a project management culture that has no awareness or practice of programme management.]There is a fundamental difference between the delivery of a new capability and actually realising measurable benefits as a result of implementing that capability.The programme management approach recognises this difference in the complementary roles of Programme Manager and Business Change Manager. The Programme Manager is responsible for delivering the capability; whereas the Business Change Manager is responsible for realising the resultant benefits through the integration of the new capabilities into the business operations.This is so often overlooked. Partly because the whole idea of clearly defined and documented, measurable benefits is in itself overlooked and also because it so often assumed that simply completing projects and delivery new capabilities will of itself deliver the benefit – which of course it usually doesn’t – as is reflected in the 70% failure rate of all change initiatives.Each of these 3 roles may be a full-time role or a part-time role. The deciding factors are the scale and complexity of the step change you are seeking to implement and the size and complexity of your organisation.The amount of time allocated to each role is at this stage very secondary to the fact that each role is recognised and defined and undertaken by a person with the appropriate skill, and personal authority to exercise the role. What is of paramount importance is that somebody understands and owns the execution of each role – whether it takes them 10 minutes per day or all day every day.The change initiative will almost certainly NOT succeed, if these roles and the processes inherent in the execution of these roles are not fulfilled.Author: Stephen WarrilowArticle Source: EzineArticles.comUnix inter-process communication (IPC)
© 2011, ©Active Consultants 2011. All rights reserved. Copying in part or in entirety only permitted by written consent
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
