The Difference Between Project And Change Management That Could Lose You (Or Get You) Your Next Job
Lessons learned in business consultancy and the art of success
So I just got rolled off an engagement by a the client of mine (this is consultant speak for fired, it just helps make us feel better).
The client was a German company who had a US manufacturing presence. They had brought us in to help them with a turnaround strategy to get them back in the black in 2022. The list of potential strategies that we were exploring was huge and involved the possibility of both relocating facilities as well as potentially exiting certain product lines.
My role is typically a People and Change Lead however in our first intake meeting we realized that the German way of looking at change management was to simply tell someone to do something different. So knowing this going in we put myself down as People Enablement Lead instead and we tried to refrain from even talking about change management.
This worked up until a point where I was suggesting that we run some workshops to get potential cost savings or operating efficiency ideas from all of the employees. This was my way of trying to get employee buy-in which is a large part of change management and also one of the main reasons most projects fail. Actually, the number one reason most change efforts fail, according to a Deloitte study, is employee resistance.
So, my idea was to try to run these workshops not only to collect ideas, but to also reduce resistance and get buy-ins to involve the employees. This was my smoke and mirrors way of attempting to successfully pull this off without mentioning the bad words “change management.”
I was doing okay until the client decided to not go this route because they did not feel they had the time, nor the bandwidth to reach out to all employees.
Their reasoning was that they didn’t need to get the buy-in of their employees because they were in crisis mode and they didn’t have time.
I agreed with them (that they were indeed in crisis mode as opposed to business as usual), however I also let them know that was an even bigger reason to get in as many ideas as they could.
By the way, If you don’t think employees can help in a turnaround situation please watch this video of a TedTalk by Simon Sinek (starting at minute 8:27):
They then went on to state that a turnaround situation was not change management at which point I had to respectfully disagree and let them know that a turnaround was one of the biggest change management situation an organization could face and that they should enlist the help of every single one of their employees. They in turn respectably disagreed which explains why I’m on a flight home writing this article.
It’s NOT Change Management…
If I had to do it over again, would I do the same thing?
Absolutely.
I was practicing Radical Candor which I feel any consultant is obliged to do — it’s just common good practice, and it’s helps you avoid committing consultant malpractice.
Funny enough, it’s the second German company in a row that has not seen the value in what I do (I guess there is probably another lesson learned in there).
It is also the second German company I have worked with that put up some pretty posters espousing their corporate values but fell short when it came to actually practicing them.
They had some great values such as collaboration, empowerment, transparency, etc., however, as you can see from the events above, they hardly practiced what they preached. I call this the Say-Do gap.
How you do anything is how you do everything. Even in the smallest moments, leadership has to role model the company values — and especially in challenging times.
Unfortunately this is management 101 — and it has everything to do with empowerment. Being a manager, much less running an organization, means getting things done through other people.
If you can’t do this successfully, it’s either because you don’t trust the very people you probably hired or it’s because you don’t really know how to delegate and manage people. And I’ll give you a hint — it’s not the Industrial Age mentality of just telling them what to do and then micromanaging them, which is exactly what this executive leadership team was doing.
So What Were Some Of My Lessons Learned?
First is ensuring the client knows the difference between project management and change management. Project management is about hands and feet, in other words: activities and checklists.
Change management is about hearts and minds — the whole person. Not only would I ensure the client understands this, I would also make sure that they see the reason that engaging their employees hearts and minds is so critical.
You can commit a little bit to your employees in the way of benefits and wages and they in turn will give you a little bit of time and effort, or you can go all in on your employees and they in turn will give you all they’ve got.
The next thing I am going to do on my next client engagement is put them to the Say-Do test prior to committing to the work or taking the engagement.
I need to ensure that they practice what they preach, otherwise there is not going to be any trust or accountability and I’ll be needing to roll them off before they can do the same to me.
Written by Christopher W. Jones, PMP, ODCP
SHIFT Consulting Group
Business Improvement Consulting