How to Get the Most Value from Your Change Management Consultant
Time and time again, Change Management consultants are brought on to projects too late or are excused too early. Or worse, sometimes OCM professionals are never brought on to critical projects at all! Partnering with a skilled Change Management Practitioner often results in much higher adoption for employees who are undergoing a major change and therefore increases the likelihood of success of the project and return on investment. If you’re planning to hire an OCMer for your next project, congrats—you’ve made a great decision! The next step is to get the most out of the Change Management consultant’s time and effort. Take note of these tips, tricks, and lessons learned to get the most value from an OCM professional.
Before the Project Begins
Change Management practitioners are instrumental to the success of a project and their price tag reflects the value that they add. To get the most bang for your buck from your Change Manager, they should be set up to hit the ground running as soon as they roll onto the project. To do this, a few housekeeping items must be completed before the OCM practitioner arrives for their first day:
Plan for the Change Manager to Join the Project Early
Far too often, people who aren’t knowledgeable about Change Management think that an appropriate start date for the OCM consultant is a month or two before go live. In reality, that’s far too late and the OCM consultant should start at the very beginning of the project, no later than kick-off and ideally even before that, to help with preparations for engaging the team. While it’s possible to start an OCM professional midway through the project, the later that you start the OCM professional, the less time they have to prepare employees and the organization, and the less likely it is that they can make a significant and measurable improvement to employee readiness and adoption.
Allocate Time in the Project Plan for the Core Team and Key Stakeholders to Regularly Engage with the OCM Consultant
Change Management consultants are most successful at preparing employees for change when they have input from the project’s core team and key project stakeholders. The OCM consultant must understand the details around what is changing and why, in order to develop communication pieces and other collateral to educate the employees who will be impacted by the change. To achieve this, the OCM consultant needs to meet with key project team members to understand the detail behind the impacts to employees. Few things are worse for an OCM consultant than having to beg subject matter experts for their time in order to capture stakeholder impacts. Project Managers can get ahead of this age-old dilemma by planning for OCMers to have 5-10% of project time with key stakeholders such as subject matter experts, project leaders, and business analysts.
Prepare for the Consultant’s First Day and Onboarding
Lesa Sanford Lozano, a seasoned Change Management professional, recalls a time when her new client asked her to show up at 7:30 am on Day One of a new assignment. She arrived at her new client on time and proceeded to wait in the lobby for nearly half of the day while they tried to find someone to give her a badge and show her around. Guess what—the client paid for those nonproductive hours! Before the OCMer’s first day, be sure to secure a laptop for them, designate a desk or workspace, and arrange for necessary security access, such as a security badge and system access. Additionally, an onboarding plan should be created for the consultant that includes an overview of the project, introductions to the core team and key stakeholders, and a deep dive on relevant topics. Think through who the Change Management consultant needs to meet with to provide maximum value and schedule the meetings before the consultant even begins the project so that the time is blocked off, rather than the consultant fighting for time with busy team members in their first few days on the project.
During the Project
Conduct an OCM Kickoff
It’s not uncommon for project team members to be unaware of what Change Management professionals do on a project, much less, what the OCM consultant will ask of them. Conducting a Change Management kick-off at the start of a project can help explain to leaders and project team members why this project is different, what the OCM consultant’s role is, and set expectations with team members to give of their time and knowledge if the OCMer reaches out. It can also be incredibly helpful for project sponsors to go on a roadshow to meet with fellow leaders to help them understand the vision and purpose of change management.
Monitor and Manage the OCM Consultant
The most common way to monitor the output of the OCMer is through a weekly or biweekly status report. A status report usually includes major status of current and upcoming activities as well as any change related risks and issues. Expectations should be set with the OCMer that a status report is due and their participation in status report meetings is required. Regular touchpoints with the OCMer should also take place to understand if there are roadblocks or hurdles that are preventing the OCMer from completing deliverables. These touch points can also be a time to review OCM deliverables.
Watch Out for these “Ambush Items”
Change Management Practitioners are vital to the success of the project and for end user adoption. As such, OCMers should have a seat at the key update or status meetings to allow for an opportunity to share updates on deliverables, discuss red flags, and hear updates from other project team members.
Ensure that any software or programs that your OCM consultant uses align with corporate standards. For example, if your company uses Camtasia as the corporate standard for training video recordings, ensure that your OCM consultant also uses Camtasia. Inevitably, updates will be needed to deliverables that the consultant has created and it’s important that an employee at the company is able to make revisions long term, without having to engage the OCM consultant each time an update is needed.
Pay the Change Management consultant’s invoices on time—regardless of whether they work for a big or small firm. If they’re an independent consultant, you are likely their main—or only!— source of income so it’s especially important that you pay on time!
Introduce your OCM consultant to your Corporate Communications team so that they understand brand standards, company colors, PowerPoint templates, and any other internal cultural expectations around communication.
After the Project
Include Your OCM Consultant as Part of the Post Go Live Support Team
Let’s be honest, oftentimes projects run behind, the go live date gets postponed, and projects have a budget to which they must adhere. When this happens, it can be easy to cut your Training and Change Management consultants. However, consider keeping your OCM consultant on the project for at least 6-12 weeks for post go live support to address issues that occur during and after launch. The OCM consultant should participate in post go live “war room” status meetings for things such as end user issues and can quickly assist with writing communications or creating job aids to get things back on track.
Capture Readiness Data
Post go live, a skilled OCM consultant can capture employee readiness and adoption data. This information can be documented by sending surveys to frontline employees which can provide leadership with a perspective on the success of the project. This data can also provide support for engaging an OCM professional for future projects, because chances are, employees will report being much more prepared when Change Management support is provided.
Document Lessons Learned
Time and time again, a project or phase of a project wraps up and everyone is so exhausted from the major achievement that the last thing that people want to do is rehash the mistakes that were made. However, documenting the lessons learned is a crucial last step to take after go live, when the project is winding down. It’s incredibly valuable for team members in all workstreams on successive phases or future projects to avoid repeating costly and time-consuming mistakes. Your OCM consultant can design and facilitate an effective lessons learned workshop, and can document the findings.
Project Wrap Up
Ensure a “warm” knowledge transfer between the OCM consultant and an employee Before the OCM consultant rolls off the project, there are a few housekeeping items that should always be completed. For example, ensure that all of the consultant’s work products are uploaded to your organization’s document repository and that the consultant has conducted a knowledge transfer of any ongoing work to someone inside the company. A good OCM consultant will plan for this and schedule a meeting or two to accomplish this; if they don’t broach this topic, insist on it!
Complete an Evaluation
Feedback is a gift and there’s a good chance that your OCMer doesn’t get a lot of it—unless a client is very dissatisfied with their work. Take the time to provide both positive and constructive to your OCM consultant and let them know what you really appreciated about them and their work and what really made a difference, as well as what they could do better next time. Also consider leaving them a review on LinkedIn as it can be helpful to other organizations that are looking to engage OCM talent, as well beneficial for the OCM consultant’s career. There’s a good chance that the OCM consultant is starved for feedback, especially if they’re an independent consultant, and your input can be incredibly meaningful.
Countless case studies show that skilled Change Management practitioners are worth the worth the time, effort, and money to boost the likelihood of project success, increase employee readiness, and decrease employee resistance to change. As such, the price tag of a strong, seasoned OCM consultant reflects the immense value that such a consultant brings to the project. You can get the most out of your OCM consultant by being intentional about their support before, during, and after a project.
Contact ChangeStaffing for guidance on getting the most out of an Organizational Change Management consultant!
A very special thank you to Lesa Sanford Lozano for her thought leadership and for collaborating with us on this blog.
Written by Kylette Harrison