Managing a change project

Introduction

People and organisations generally claim a positive attitude towards change, formally considered an opportunity: is this the real situation?
In the real world, deep-down change is perceived as something negative that gets between us and a situation which we have learned to manage.
How to overcome this scenario?
What to do so that people and organisations learn to orient change in the desired direction, instead of enduring it?

Presentation

Managing change projects presents critical aspects that may not always be evident.
Change projects concerning organisational, cultural and strategic aspects may not be perceived as critical and their management is assigned to the responsibility of people who have in-depth technical knowledge, but who do not have the skills necessary to manage this type of project.
This course is designed to help people learn techniques and tools for managing change projects related to:

• company strategy (new products, company repositioning, strategic impact due to new technologies, other);
• new organisation structure (new production, commercial reorganisation, other);
• cultural change (from a family business to public company, from national to an international company, other).

Participants

The course is designed for managers and change agents, that is people who support the effort of the organisation to realise the desired change, overcoming resistance and effectively managing conflict.
The change agent can manage different roles (project manager, department manager, process engineer, top manager, other), work alone or in a team, be inside or outside the organisation.

Purpose

Help the participants acquire:

• an organic view of change and related causes, both inside as well as outside the organisation;
• awareness of the need to guide change in the desired direction, not letting yourself be surprised or caught unprepared;
• an organic view of the structure of a change project, the resistance that it will encounter and the methods and tools that can help overcome them.

Contents

Some key points

• What is change: definition and contexts
• Why we tend to maintain the “status quo”
• The drivers for change: inside and outside the organisation
• Types of change: accidental, planned, adaptive, evolutionary, radical
• The dynamics of organisational change: known and surprising aspects!

Let’s discover a change project

• Project management: characteristics and peculiarities
• Programme, project, process, activity, definitions and relationship
• The structural variables of each project: objectives, people, resources, time
• Possible types of projects: strategic, innovation, change, order.

Characteristics of a change project

• The life cycle of a change project
• Questions to ask yourself before starting a project
• Differences between goals and objectives: why the SMART objective may not be enough
• The feasibility study in a change project
• Why it is good to make your check-list before starting a change project
• Why change projects fail
• Why, once you reach your goal, you must keep going right away

Why groups, departments and people resist change

• Understand the needs, motivations and objectives of others
• The most common reasons for resisting change
• Why knowledge, or the lack of it, represents a factor of resistance
• Why the search for knowledge “gaps” guarantees success
• Why not all people who resist change are “bad”

Strategies for overcoming resistance to change

• The change equation: structure, areas of applications, methods for use
• Other diagnostic tools
• Cooperative negotiation as a tool to overcome resistance
• Define the path for overcoming resistance
• Why formal power always represents the last resort

Problem-solving

• General techniques for facing problems
• The tool kit you need
• What to do when you don’t know what to do
• Insight: restructuring the context as a tool for solving problems
• Why learning to make mistakes consciously is fundamental: methods for learning from trial and error
• Using a metaphor in problem-solving

The profile of the change agent

• The profile of the role depending on the context
• Technical knowledge and skills
• Why knowing how to listen, ask questions, think critically and creatively represent essential characteristics
• Mental attitude: why it is so important to concentrate on the result and not on the resistance

The teaching method

This course has been designed and structured to promote complete immersion in the topic and the individual experience.
The participants will face situations through exercises and video clips that reproduce moments similar to the ones they face daily.
Would you like to know more about the teaching method? Click here.

Final test and certificate

At the end of the course, participants take a test; after passing it, they may download their certificate of attendance.

Duration

• Two days, 8 hours each
• Two or more days, depending on the learning needs of the participants and how in-depth the topics are covered.