Stakeholder Engagement and Change Management Insights

Welcome to our Saturday catch-up! We're thrilled to see such a positive response to our blog. To celebrate, we're sharing a recap of our five most-read articles so far. Here's a look at the topics you've found most interesting, with key takeaways from each.

Managing change in business is a profession that can be both dynamic and stable at the same time. The cycle of innovation and adaptation has sped up, but implementation challenges remain fairly stable. And managing change well continues to present numerous challenges: the strategies that businesses adopt can either hinder or enable organisational success.

Successful change initiatives are not merely driven by intuition or hunches; they are built on a robust foundation of evidence, data and facts. If the practice of change management can not be validated, it will only get part the way there. Evidence, data, and facts need to guide successful organisational transformations.

Change at work can be a fork in the road, offering an opportunity for personal growth or plunging us into despair. When change is imposed on us, rather than chosen, finding a path to growth is crucial. A powerful way to achieve this is through mentorship. It's a guiding light that helps us navigate the complexities of workplace transitions.

Change management is a delicate blend of art and science, requiring curiosity in both organisational dynamics and human behaviour.

In order to flex into an agile environment, change managers can provide support in four main ways.

Coaches are people who've gone before and have substantial experience. They know things. It may have taken you long hours across several weekends to locate and fix a noise in your car engine, but now you know how to do it - it seems easy. Imagine if your neighbour had known how to fix your engine and you could have just learned it from them? What would it have been worth to you?

Change management is a dynamic field that plays a pivotal role in navigating organisational transformations. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, honing your skills and pursuing a career in change management offers a rewarding opportunity to drive positive change and foster productive organisational cultures.

To build change maturity at an enterprise level, organisations need to move through their paces. From having change management scattered around isolated projects, organisations need to build standards, build competency and ensure that change management is a requirement for new projects.

The role of a Change Sponsor can be a challenging one, as is having a Change Sponsor understand why their active involvement is essential in bringing about effective change. We look at why just hiring a Change Manager is not enough to get the job done and why the involvement of the Change Sponsor is essential. It all comes down to roles.

One of the most resistant cultures I've worked with was also where I had one of the most satisfying conversations about sustainability. It was a rainmaker culture.

Large-scale change management inevitably involves technology implementations. The technical teams are very often resourced with expert...

Most of us accept that the world of work is constantly changing. But I was thinking about how the wider world is also constantly in flux,...

When a new change manager begins an engagement, it's common for business leaders to immediately jump to discussions about training. It's an instinctive response, an attempt to grab hold of a tangible solution to an abstract problem. This is the change training myth: the belief that a complex organisational change can be solved by simply providing a training course.

The Real Job of a Change Manager When asked, "What do you do?", the role of a Change Manager is often misunderstood. Many people think...

When organisations push change too far, their employees may start to show specific signs of distress. What was once enthusiasm for a new initiative may be replaced by indifference, apathy, and disengagement. Debates about a workplace change can give way to weariness, cynicism, and complaints, signalling that your organisation has hit a point of change saturation.

In business, understanding and delighting customers is an ongoing challenge. A positive customer experience (CX) has become a primary differentiator for businesses. Effective change management is the key to navigating this challenge, allowing organisations to adapt and improve smoothly while consistently delivering an exceptional CX.

Understanding that the success of one stakeholder contributes to the success of all is a paradigm shift that benefits everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats, and by fostering an environment of shared success, we amplify the impact of our efforts. Becoming an advocate means creating a culture of support. This culture encourages open communication, collaboration, and genuine concern for the well-being of each stakeholder, which leads to increased morale and productivity.

The size and make up of your change management team is an important consideration for getting the change work done smoothly.

Communications is a discipline and profession in its own right, but many projects combine the two functions. This makes it crucial to keep focusing on and improving the key area of overlap: change communications.