How Can We Learn
to Manage Change?
G. Michael Campbell has led many
large global initiatives involving
stakeholders from around the world.
He has also written Succeeding with
Senior Management: Getting the Right
Support at the Right Time for Your Project
and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Project
Management and Communication Skills
for Project Managers and has authored
numerous industry publications. He is
currently adjunct professor of business
management at St. Edward’s University
in Austin, Texas, USA.
© Business Expert Press 978-1-94858-059-5 (2018)
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G. Michael Campbell
Abstract: Every executive has been tasked at one time or
another with leading a major initiative for the c­ ompany.
These opportunities can lead to promotions and new and
exciting challenges or to misfires that can set you back.
Frankly, change management is a fact of life in business
today. And change is happening at an accelerating rate.
The obvious conclusion is that executives must embrace
that fact and learn to manage change. At the senior levels
in the political environment, an ­executive cannot afford
to fail at delivering on the project. This article reveals
how to learn more about managing these change initia-
tives in today’s challenging corporate environment. It
covers the resources available to you and provides prac-
tical advice on how to navigate the ­swirling currents that
these changes incur.
Keywords: assessing readiness for change, change
management, change management training, hiring
vendors, impact on the stakeholders, learning to lead
change
In the first three articles of this series, I covered the
following:
1. Basic principles of managing change
2. Managing change in a demanding corporate environment
3. Leadership skills and strategies for managing change
I believe all of the articles provided not only knowl-
edge regarding change management but also practical
ideas to apply in leading a significant corporate change
initiative. However, you may also desire to learn more,
particularly when the change you are leading has
­significant risk.
In this article, I am going to walk you through what
I consider the best ways to learn more. However, as a first
step, I am going to ask you to do an honest assessment of
your organization’s history in managing significant corpo-
rate changes. Your ­assessment will provide input into the
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 How Can We Learn to Manage Change?

decision-making process for choosing the
best strategy for learning change manage-
ment. In providing answers to the areas of
investigation, I would like you to consider
using the f­ollowing scale:
■■ 10 = Abundant evidence to suggest both
strong experience and commitment in
this area
■■ 7 = Evidence to suggest there may be
­minor deficiencies in experience or com-
mitment in this area
■■ 5 = Evidence suggests obvious inconsis-
tencies in experience or commitment in
this area
■■ 3 = Evidence suggests almost no experi-
ence or commitment in this area
■■ 0 = No evidence of experience or commit-
ment in this area
■■ How much resistance was there to the
change?
■■ Was the leadership able to effectively man-
age the resistance to achieve the results?
Resource Availability
The most obvious resource in a large
change initiative is people. You must have
subject-matter experts available. This is
particularly important when the initiative
crosses corporate lines of responsibility
across the organization chart.
However, resource availability is not
­always just people. There may be a technol-
ogy requirement for success, and you will
need to assess whether it is both available
and fit-for-purpose for your initiative. Eval-
uating this aspect of your ­initiative calls
into question the next area of evaluation.

When I reference evidence, I am refer- Leadership Support

ring to documentation or data to support Again, most change initiatives require
the evaluation (Table 1). ­resources (particularly people) that may be

Table 1: Assessment tool for past changes (use the scale of 10–0 ­referred to above)
Evaluation of Past Initiatives Evidence to Support
Area of Assessment (see scale above) Evaluation
Change culture
Resource availability
Leadership support
Well-documented work processes
Impact on stakeholders
Corporate risk tolerance
Total score (out of 60)

Change Culture outside your span of control. The other key

In evaluating the change culture for your
organization, look at successful experience
with changes in the recent past. Depend-
ing on the situation for your organization,
I would suggest going back 3 to 5 years to
answer these questions.
executives must be willing and available to
be engaged in helping make the change
a success. Refer to article no. 2, titled
­Managing Change in a Demanding Corporate
Environment to learn how to overcome defi-
ciencies in this area.

■■ Did the company navigate the changes well, Well-Documented Work Processes
and did the business outcomes achieve When you are making changes during
the expectations? a key initiative, you are almost a­lways

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 How Can We Learn to Manage Change?
c­hanging the way people work. This
­assumption makes it critical to understand
how well documented the work processes
are. If  work processes are simply “that is
the way we’ve always done it around here,”
you will have a real challenge. I would rec-
ommend that one of the first activities in
your plan would be to actually document
the workflows that are being impacted.
Impact on Stakeholders
The reason for suggesting the documenta-
tion of work processes is the need to assess
the impact on key stakeholders. Without
documentation and the associated data,
it is very difficult to assess the impact. It
will also be difficult to determine how big
the change is. In my experience, some
changes are quite small and people eas-
ily accept and change. However, when the
impact is significant, then other factors
come into play. For example, if the impact
is substantial, it means that training will
be required. If that is the case, then the
training needs to be tailored to the change
in work process. That simply reinforces
the need for documented workflows.
Corporate Risk Tolerance
The last area to assess is your organization’s
tolerance for risks to business operations or
compliance. Each company has a unique
profile related to how much risk is accept-
able. I assume that as an executive within
your company, you are well versed in how
much risk you can take as you attempt to
implement a significant change.
Now that you have a more detailed under-
standing of what I was asking you to assess,
you may wish to go back to Table 1 and make
any appropriate changes.
Learning More about Change
Management
On the basis of the assessment you com-
pleted earlier, you are now in a position
to understand how effective your com-
pany has been in the past in managing
change initiatives. You may now be ready
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to determine how to best learn from oth-
ers who are considered experts in change
management.
There are essentially two ways to learn
from others—hiring people to do the
change for you and learning from them as
part of an on-the-job training effort. The
other way would be to take a training class
on a methodology to utilize as part of your
initiative. Let us take a look at the advan-
tages and disadvantages of each type of
vendor.
Hiring People
One obvious way to learn more about lead-
ing change initiatives is to hire people who
have a great deal of experience in planning
and executing a change initiative. I would
suggest that if your assessment of your
company’s experience and commitment is
35 points or lower, hiring people would be
your safest strategy. Finding the right fit
will be i­mportant. I would like to take you
through the ­ typical people you will find
to hire. They will generally fall into three
groups.
1. Fixed methodology for change management
2. Broad experience in managing change
initiatives
3. Some hybrid of the first two
Fixed Methodology in Change Management
Those with a fixed methodology have a
very rigorous playbook that they follow to
plan and implement a change initiative.
The distinct advantage of this group is that
their methodology has been developed
and tested over a variety of change ini-
tiatives and produces predictable results.
As a result, you can learn from them
along the way so you are prepared for
future efforts that you might lead. How-
ever, please be aware that it will require
you to be very ­involved in the project.
If you believe you are just hiring them
to do the work and ­observe from arm’s
length, you will not ­really learn how they
do it.
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