Strategic Change Consultants: Delivering the change you want to see
Inspirational Change Leaders from top left to bottom right: The Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, John Lennon, and Martin Luther King Jr.
As a seasoned strategy professional with major corporates around the globe, I have long seen the opportunity to eliminate the failure of major strategic change projects. Despite being launched with commitment and energy from the top of organisations, and often with big name consultancy support; cost overrun, delay and performance shortfall have been the norm for well over a decade.
My hunger for solutions was such that two years ago I broke away from my mainstream commercial career to learn and use the tools of change. I now believe that the right blend of commercial practice and change psychology delivers a truly effective business strategic change capability.
Traditional change projects have struggled to manage the people side of change. An emerging discipline known as change management successfully does this by ensuring that new capabilities are employed not just deployed. Benefits are realised by managing the staff uptake swiftly, broadly, and to its full capability, thus ensuring project return on investment is achieved.
Today change management looks a little like a cottage industry of independent practitioners and small consultancies that can lack credibility at the Board table. Whilst many people describe themselves as change managers, it is often difficult to recruit with confidence that the desired business benefits will be realised. Some ASX-10 corporations are creating their own internal change centres of excellence, but most organisations lack the scale or appetite to do this. Until change management becomes available from major consultancies, what are risk-averse major corporates to do?
There are some excellent smaller consultancies that excel in realising the benefits from business change. The best are distinguished by:
- Offering a comprehensive change measurement system
- Using a proven change methodology such as Prosci
- Employing high-calibre mainstream business people as consultants
As one of the very few strategy consultants certified in change management globally, I have a near unique mix of skills which give me an extremely powerful strategic change capability.
Businesses only change when the people inside choose to. So, what are you doing to help your people change?
Ben Ramsden
Senior Transformation Consultant
Back in the 60s, Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions said it all. And today, we’re still ‘borrowing’ selectively from it. I was reminded of this recently when I heard someone say that the best way to give-up smoking was to get cancer. Effective ‘crisis-formation’ is a skill and it takes guts. One of the hidden-values in employing consultants is to attribute to them blame for creating crises. Paying-out a consultant is money well-spent.
Isn’t it interesting how a “burning platform” is often used to create the motivation for change! Use with care though – change may well happen, rapidly, but it will focus on solving the problem rather than necessarily siezing a new opportunity.