myAIPMManaging change – the power of the invisibility cloak
Helena Cain | The Mandarin
When change management is done well, organisations grow. When it’s done badly, people hurt unnecessarily. Management consultant Helena Cain outlines excellent tips for achieving high-quality change management.
The trouble with good change management is that if you do everything really well, the client thinks that they did it all themselves and that you haven’t done much at all.
This is an ongoing dilemma – good change happens from within, it’s internally led, the client ‘owns’ it, is seen to lead it and a decent consultant empowers the client team to do so.
This empowering can take many forms, but generally speaking it is about helping. Strategically, it’s about helping an organisation understand the nature and demands of the change they are proposing, ensuring that what they are proposing supports their overall business strategy, and helping them develop a change approach that will work with their organisational culture and circumstance to deliver the results they are expecting.
At an operational level, it’s about helping them plan their way forward – across people, process and systems – in a way that leaves them feeling confident that they have a plan they can lead and implement, usually with a high level of background support and guidance from the consulting team.
They don’t need to feel 100% confident, just confident enough to trust that there’s a practical way to drive and support their people through the changes and that their consultant will support them with tools and know-how at each step.
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Managing change – the power of the invisibility cloak, Helena Cain, The Mandarin, 2020