“It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change”. - Charles Darwin

Change is now steady state in virtually all walks of life; this is the case in our organisational and personal lives.
Once we accept this, and potentially welcome it , then we can start dealing with it in effective ways, attitudinally and behaviorally. Though of course this sort of presumes change is happening to you. In the modern organisation creating change, incremental and step change, is key to being successful.

People

In the majority of situations the people element of a change programme needs the most attention, and at the same time is the most critical factor in its success. Usually it is people who make a change work, dealing with issues, designing solutions and putting in the energy required to see a change through to highlight a few of the key areas. To do so they need to be fully engaged; this takes all the personal and interpersonal skills shown in other areas of leadership.

At the same time people can often find change difficult. It can be hard to let go of what you are used to, it can make us uncomfortable and there may be good reasons to doubt its benefits. Taking people through a change cycle, going through the various personal stages and coming through positive and engaged takes leadership. Even with the best leadership you still may find you loose some people along the way.

Organisations

In the Darwin quote we could easily replace the word 'species' with 'organisations'. Indeed organisations that do not respond to change are just as likely to become extinct. When managing change you therefore need to understand how the organisation works and be able to draw upon a large 'gene pool' of resources to find alternative solutions. By controlling the 'genes' selected then we should ensure the outcome will be viable.

As change is a constant now on organisations then we need to continuously learn, part of being a learning organisation, in order to be able to respond rapidly in our adaptations and also to become increasingly pro-active. In some project systems a learning log is one of the first logs established and the last to be closed.

Managing Change & Project Systems

There are many systems and ways to manage a project. Generally they all fall within a variation of balancing time, quality and resources, using a structure of establishing the project, managing according to a plan, whilst monitoring and controlling activities, in order to deliver outcomes and finally closing the project down. Obviously there are various levels of complexity in how this is done and such systems as PRINCE 2 provide an in depth project management structure to do this.

Whatever system is adopted to manage change the project system is there to manage the project, whilst the project is there to deliver the change. Managing the whole change includes all elements of people management and leadership, integration across the wider organisation, decision making and realisation of the benefits. Any organisational development system need to encompass this wider setting of change.