1st Edition

Making Organizational Change Stick How to create a culture of partnership between Project and Change Management

By Gabrielle O'Donovan Copyright 2018

    Business needs change. And it needs it in ways, at a rate and on a scale that is unprecedented. Current success rates for organizational change projects are dismal and are likely to remain so until organizations reinvent their approach to project delivery, and learn how to integrate Change Management and Project Management successfully. In this ground-breaking and innovative book, Gabrielle O Donovan shows you how to design strategy, structures and processes to realize this integration and deliver sustainable and commercially powerful business change.

    She opens the book by providing the context, describing both the problem and the solution; how the disconnect between Project Management and Change Management feeds the 40–70 per cent failure rate and the laying of many a dud egg; and how cross-discipline integration efforts thus far have only addressed the tip of the iceberg, ignoring the subterranean cultural element that can divide or unite project teams. From there, she profiles Project Management and Change Management in turn and, crucially, the value and service propositions of these respective disciplines and the different theories, models and tools they employ.

    In the second half of the book she makes a ‘Project and Change Partnership’ (PCP) culture explicit and measurable, articulating those cultural assumptions that will support an effective alliance and that relate to those universal problems all organizations face regarding the macro environment, external adaptability and survival, and internal integration. From there, she describes how Project Managers and Change Managers can cooperate daily by dividing work packages and activities throughout the end-to-end project lifecycle. Project leaders who instill a PCP culture will benefit from the unique value that these interdependent disciplines bring to project delivery. It is they who will lay golden eggs and realize business benefits.

    Making Organizational Change Stick is written for project leaders, Change Managers, Project/Programme Managers, design thinkers, business architects and anyone concerned with business change.

    Contents, Foreword, About this Book, About the Author, Acknowledgements, Part 1: Setting the Scene, 1. Introduction, 2. Project and Change Partnership (PCP): Methodology Overview, Part II: Understanding Project Management and Change Management, 3. An Overview of Project Management, 4. An Overview of Change Management, 5. The Role of Culture, Part III - Implementing PCP Methodology, A: Integration Below Surface Level , 6. Project Team Assumptions Alignment: Marco Concepts , 7. Project Team Assumptions Alignment: External Survival , 8. Project Team Assumptions Alignment: Internal Integration, B. Integration Above the Surface, 9 Partnership Across Every Dimension and Phase, Index, Tables, Figures

    Biography

    Gabrielle O’Donovan has clocked up more than 30,000 hours over 20-plus years working on transformational change projects that have cover the full spectrum – culture transformation, process reengineering, restructuring, regulatory, infrastructure, technology plus M&A. Edgar Schein, Professor Emeratis, Sloan School of Management, MIT, USA has remarked on Gabrielle’s work on culture as 'notable'. She is an accomplished Change Management and Organizational Culture practitioner, author, university lecturer and conference speaker.

    'Gabrielle O Donovan’s Making Organizational Change Stick: How to Create a Culture of Partnership between Project and Change Management, which came out in December, is my book of the year. Gabrielle is a wonderful author, she writes with real authority, in a style that is easy to read; she mixes practical advice with theory and examples. This is a rich and convincing book that tackles what is now a fundamental requirement for all project managers.' - Jonathan Norman, Knowledge Hub Manager at The Major Projects Association, UK.

    'Gabrielle’s work makes a case for establishing a productive partnership between the professions of Change Management and Project Management. Gabrielle’s work extends existing ideas within cultural theory to develop new and heightened understanding of the impact of culture in projects. More critically, she is able to utilise such models to surface ideas regarding the common culture needed to underpin the integrated perspective of change and projects. She is also able to offer specific mechanisms for developing the joint culture through shared artefacts, life cycles and perspectives that can enrich both disciplines. Following the proposals made in the work can enrich the development and management perspectives and offer the common ground needed to build a supportive new culture capable of supporting new understanding and insights.' - Prof. Darren Dalcher, Director, National Centre for Project Management, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, Editor, Advances in Project Management