Change Management: soft or hard skill? Bringing together the disciplines and skills for the realization of the strategic objectives

• Understand the concept of Change Management and put this concept into the perspective of strategy execution
• Identify the differences and complementarities between Business Reengineering, Project Management and Change Management
• Addressing the challenges of multidisciplinarity: convergence between “contents” and “people”
• Discuss on the concrete cases illustrating the approach

Nowadays, "transformation " is part of the daily life in many companies, managing increasingly heavy and complex project portfolios, and where speed of implementation is a key success factor.

Fortunately, the question of the impacts on the individuals arises both transversely and within each project. This question often lies down at the crossroads of various changes involving both efficiency and effectiveness.This impact management on the individuals, this “Change Management”, can be considered as an objective in itself, a “track” within a project.

However, its real added value consists in its alignment with other dimensions that are necessary to the achievement of the objectives of a project, a program, a strategy.The objectives of this workshop is to put Change Management into perspective with respect to the underlying main goal that consists in the realization of your strategic objectives.Indeed, the Change will have to be considered at many levels:

• between the project and the impacted operational units
• between the project and the business, HR, IT, …
• and probably also between the executive committee and the field level

There are several frameworks and methodologies for Change Management, but in any case, it is not sufficient to select one of them and to go for it in a reckless manner…It will be necessary to reach first an agreement on the essentials of the approach, and above all efforts will have to be made to give a sense to the Change so as to make it echo at the operational level.This “sense” given to the Change will also be the one that will guide the content of the transformation as well as the pace of its implementation.

This is where we perceive the necessary convergence of Change Management with the reengineering activities (processes, customer journeys, reorganization, IT implementation) and the activities of project management that will define the framework of their implementation.Indeed, it is here that the difference between the important “successful delivery” and the equally-important “delivering success” will play a major role.

In addition, and as mentioned above, if Change Management needs to be as close as possible to the field-level to reinforce the realization of the effective changes, it also needs to step back.In the case of medium and large-sized companies that have a broad portfolio of projects, the question of a Change Plan, and perhaps also a Change Management Office will be raised.

And here again, the convergences with the Project Management Offices logics, and even Enterprise Architecture can enrich the thoughts and discussions.The workshop will be built on these themes, involving concepts and real project examples.Expert: François-Xavier Page, nGage Consulting

Participants are hereby informed that they are likely to appear on photographs taken at the event. These are intended to be published in print and/or digital media published by Maison Moderne.