- A dedicated change manager improves the odds of delivery by tailoring best practice to organisational culture.
- Core responsibilities include risk mitigation, resistance management, readiness checks, and embedding activities into the project plan.
- Effective plans cover communications, sponsorship, coaching, training, and clear success metrics.
- Progress comes faster with real management experience and domain knowledge of the business and affected function.
- Key competencies are communication, influencing, coaching, strategic judgement, project discipline, and self-management.
communication skills
It is essential for a change manager to be able to communicate clearly and effectively in all writing, speaking, listening and reading activities. They must be able to deliver their change message to all stakeholders involved.
Influencing othersPreferences
A big part of change is the ability to influence others, as resistance plays a big factor in the change curve. When you know the team members of your change project well, it will help you negotiate and convince them with the original reason for change and thus gain their trust.
Coaching skills
You can’t assume that everybody in the company will understand your change mission. Hence, meetings like awareness sessions, in-house training and one-to-one mentoring will be needed to deliver your message.
Strategic thinking and judgmentPreferences
It is not recommended to jump into conclusions and rush into decisions while you are a change manager. You must be able to think ahead and weigh the consequences of your actions.
Project management
Putting on a project manager’s hat while working on your change initiative will help strengthen your case and identify the problem while proposing a solution.
Self-management
Along with your ability to manage your team, you will have to manage yourself as well. What we mean by this is being able to take initiative, organise your time/workload and take accountability for your actions. In addition to these, you must also be able to control your emotions and be tolerant and confident.
Summary
As we mentioned before, change isn’t easy. It takes a lot of momentum, resilience and persistence. Being a change manager means you will need to sell the change to the individuals around you, your stakeholders, your team members, the project and the whole organisation, and eventually yourself.
Once you enter the change zone, you will have to commit to it to the very end. Thus, preparation is key to your success!
To be fully ready and equipped for your journey as a change manager, a good start is to enrol on a 3-day The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.Change Management Foundation course, or a 5-day Change Management Foundation and Practitioner course. These are accredited by APMGStatistics in partnership with the Change Management Institute (CMI).
Contact StatisticsKnowledge Train today to book your seat!
References
[1] The Change Management Institute (CMI) (2014). The Effective Change Manager’s Handbook. Australia: Vivid Publishing. 4-5The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
[2] Prosci. (Unknown). Change Management Job Description. Available: https://www.prosci.com/resources/articles/change-management-job-description. Last accessed 22 Oct 2018.