Your gateway to Fail-proof
Business Process Change:
The Change Portal™
Successful guidance of an organization from
the Old Business-As-Usual into “The New” model
is completely dependent
on informed and courageous navigation
from the journey’s start to its triumphant conclusion.
Make no mistake – the risks to success are all around you,
often hidden in plain sight.
“What’s the big deal?!?”
Let’s start with 30+ years of research, reporting, and sustained experience of this phenomenon (as in, repeated over and over and over again!):
- 70+% of this type of project will fail…
- Seventy Plus Percent.
- And, less than 3% of those failures will be caused by technology (surprised?!?)
The financial losses from these failures are already in the TEN$ OF BILLION$!
And, no one industry is safe from the KNOWN risks.
Yes, it IS a big deal. A big, costly-to-ignore, readily-manageable risk.
And, you don’t have to take my word for it ⇒
If any of your project’s success depends on
people adopting a new ‘something’ into what they do or how,
you MUST prioritize Organizational Readiness
Whatever is at the core of a process shift – new technology, downsizing, rightsizing, acquisitions, mergers, divestitures, offshoring, onshoring, outsourcing – Organizational Readiness for “The New” is at the heart of any project’s success.
The Change Portal™ is the gateway to our proprietary and integrated collection of tools, assessments, planning aids, scripts, and guidance – unique in the industry – laser-focused on beating the well-documented and insidious odds of failure that have plagued business process change efforts for decades!
With our deep understanding of the ‘inner’ game to be won toward Organizational Readiness, and our battle-hardened, fire-tested materials and guidance, you can succeed at both:
Achieving your business process change goals
AND
Developing bold, capable ‘Leaders of Change’ throughout your organization.
The What
The Change Portal™
The Change Portal™ is the primary gateway to our proprietary and integrated collection of tools, assessments, planning aids, scripts, and guidance – unique in the industry.
Through this gateway, clients gain secure access to resources housed in The Change Portal Vault™ and core to their own unique strategic plan for achieving organizational readiness.
The Portal’s Vault houses an ever-growing number of resources to advancing the development and growth of the forward-looking leadership teams: those who are purposefully strengthening their own capabilities, fortifying a resilient and adaptive leadership culture, and deliberately building self-sufficiency as successful Change Leaders.
The Organizational Readiness Framework(C)
The Organizational Readiness Framework© is our foundation. The fully-integrated suite enables a client-centric, individually-tailored strategy and program for successful organizational readiness.
Our approach facilitates an organization’s success on two strategic fronts:
- Enhance further your leadership team’s strengths in and modeling of strategic planning, communication, integrity, humility, self-awareness, innovation, problem-solving, decision-making, collaboration, and courage
- Develop and build on a model of self-sufficiency in leading performance-enhancing change across the entire enterprise.
It is leadership’s “will” that prevails over organizational “won’ts”.
Strategic Consultation
Victory over the odds working against a successful move from ‘The Old Business-As-Usual’ to “The New” begins at the top.
Infusing the Organizational Readiness Framework© into your operation’s process enhancement plan translates straight to the bottom line regarding customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, time savings, cost savings, achievement, and morale.
Our tiered approach to client collaboration begins with a dagger straight into the heart of what undermines so many well-intended projects: Sponsor and stakeholder engagement. This starts at the inflection point of influence – the senior sponsor for the organizational change.
Hello
I’m Carla Lewis,
Owner, Author, and Chief Strategist for The Change Portal™ and our signature Organizational Readiness Framework©.
Leveraging 40+ years in corporate America and twelve years as a consulting business owner, accompanied by 35+ years in Information Technology along the way on my dual-career path, my perspective is genuinely rich and unique.
Holding an MS in Human Resource Development from The American University, and certified by PROSCI as a Change Management Practitioner, I bring considerable experience and knowledge to bear:
-
- experienced, degreed, and certified in organization development and change management leadership
- have been an insider and an outsider
- have been an executive, a stakeholder, a leader, a business planner, a project manager, a project team member, and even a victim of failed project efforts
- have developed and tested approaches and tools across many projects and audiences
- have taught these methods and tools around the globe
- am all about results and how to achieve them as influenced by these experiences and mindsets, with a track record that speaks for itself.
Winning takes courage and commitment.
You know your organization deserves NOTHING less than its leadership being ALL IN for the win.
Are YOU ‘all in’?
‘Mettle’ Detector
Is this worth any more of your time, precious as we both know it is?
Organizational change often bears a stigma that the whole notion of helping people make the shift from the Old Business-As-Usual to “The New” (aka Change Management) is more HR marketing and ‘feel good’ than real work that is vital for success.
Let’s test right now if it is, indeed, worth it for you to spend one more moment thinking about this:
Suppose one or more of the following statements represent your leadership style and perspective on organizational readiness. In this case, you will be wasting your time with anything more than a click to leave this site:
-
-
- We are not like those companies/projects that failed
- We can’t spare the time to talk about it
- It should be enough that the sponsor says they want this to happen
- I just need to tell them what to do and they will figure it out
- My project isn’t that big a deal
- This is overkill
- It’s not our style to get all warm and fuzzy
- This project is non-negotiable… Just do it
- Let the high-paid consultants worry about that
- Let me know when there’s trouble so I can play firefighter
- What do you mean by “active and visible support”… I’ve got real work to do!
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If you are leaving now, just one last thought for you, along with my thanks for your time so far and sincere “Best Wishes”:
Do not ignore that some stakeholders may have a vested interest in the project failing.
So What
This next reality check focuses on the vitals of the leader seeking to navigate this passage from “The Old” to “The New” with informed boldness, strength, and courage.
THIS leader inspires those around them, modeling an approach and style that breeds confidence, energy, and even excitement in those within the sphere of their influence.
The fresh wind of change – not just in the business process but also in tenor and teamwork to accomplish the goal – brings vitality and a level of achievement that, indeed, causes others to take notice and draw closer.
Who IS this leader?
The first pass at this answer sets aside the assumed political stripes of formally-ascribed position and role definitions. These are certainly of consequence and are addressed specifically inside the Portal’s Vault, within the ‘Readiness Recon’ element of the Organizational Readiness Framework©.
To start, the focus here is more on the circumstances of one’s consideration of Self in a leadership position. Here is a non-exhaustive list of scenarios, not for purposes of elimination but for contemplation and honest self-scrutiny. Which of these might ring true?
Do you recognize this leader?
| A sponsor new to the responsibility and no knowledge of the organization’s track record with changing how it works | The Business Planner tasked with onboarding this latest budget-buster without invoking irrecoverable overload |
| A stakeholder caught by surprise while being thrown into the path of the freight train of change | The PMO tasked with integrating this ‘latest top priority’ with all the other prioritized projects on the radar screen |
| A ‘voluntold’ stakeholder with no project-related history whose skin is in the game by default | A manager facing competing priorities without the benefit of an obvious tie-breaker |
| A project manager new to the project without the aid from background, insight, or gameplan | The manager gauging affected team member performance against a model that is no longer relevant |
And here’s one that is so pervasive it qualifies as its very own ‘leadership blind spot’, worthy of serious consideration:
A historically-justified undercurrent in the organization’s culture, something akin to a kneejerk reaction to something ‘different’:
“Relax. Just wait because this too shall pass.”
Now What
Next Steps - By Role
Each of the following plays a particularly vital role in successfully navigating an organization from “The Old” to “The New.” Each has a specific set of needs to be met and depends on other roles for their success.
There are no spectators in organizational readiness. Everyone in the sphere of impact will be forced from their baseline comfort level, competence level, and confidence level. Everyone.
Time to step into awareness, the 1st step toward Fail-proof business process change.
Sponsor
The evidence is undeniable surrounding the pivotal catalytic role you, the Sponsor fills in the successful journey from “The Old” to “The New.”
You are a manager or leader in a position to kick off/authorize a business process change. Therefore, it is imperative that you visibly and consistently model support for the project and its implications.
Other vital roles need attention and support from you in your newly-assumed Chief Cheerleader and Stakeholder Coalition Coach position. Here is a sampling of those needs:
- Stakeholders need your assistance in preparing themselves and their organizations for the changes driven by the project. Help manage their expectations so they can help manage the same for their organizations. Work with them to identify and mitigate resistance so they lead and support from a position of understanding.
- The Project Manager needs you to be accessible. You must support their requests for critically timed communications during the project, knowing the audience for these messages accepts them more readily when coming from the right voice. Ensure the project is respected on your calendar, allowing for your presence for project reviews at critical milestones, thereby demonstrating support and appreciation for the efforts.
- The Affected Managers live at the bullseye of the process change and deserve consideration and support for what lies ahead. You must ensure the stakeholders can assist their direct reports with what the changes will mean. Consider that everyone’s performance will be affected for a period. What might it look like to have one foot in the ‘old’ business-as-usual while straddling the shift into the ‘new’? Similarly, the upstream and downstream organizations will need to operate under two different models simultaneously, so how will that be managed? The stakeholders will orchestrate these situations, and it is on you to help them be successful.
Stakeholder
While everyone may be a stakeholder in the process change sphere of impact, you are in a position of influence over your team’s commitment, compliance, and resistance (yes, it happens a lot).
You are a Crucial Coalition Partner, inducted into a group of leaders based on the place your organization holds in the start-to-finish process flow:
- Upstream in fueling the process,
- Downstream at the output end of the process, or
- Smack dab in the middle of the bullseye for the proposed process change.
Other faces joining this coalition – whether willingly or not – include those who are delivering essential support for the process change. Among them:
- Technical/IT delivery
- HR position definition and organizational structural adjustments
- Education and training development and delivery
- Aftercare resources (aka Help Desk) for taking over when the change is ‘implemented,’ and the circus that delivered it pack up their tents and leave town.
There are many faces and trials for those in a position of impact and influence. Success depends on a coalition of leaders who understand and respect the need for solidarity in the communication, education, and representation of the value of and leadership support for the change afoot.
Affected 'In-the-process' Manager
As an Affected Manager, you and your organization live at the bullseye of the process change and deserve consideration and support for what lies ahead.
First and foremost, you must understand what the changes will mean. Consider that everyone’s performance will be affected for a period. What might it look like to have one foot in the ‘old’ business-as-usual while straddling the shift into the ‘new’? Similarly, your upstream and downstream organizations may need to operate under two different models simultaneously, so how will that be managed?
You will negotiate and orchestrate the implications and needs in these situations. Finally, you need to know that the stakeholders and sponsor are aligned with your needs in managing the transition from old to new and are onboard to help you be successful.
Project Manager
There are some crucial distinctions and rather harsh realities you must manage while executing your duties as the Project Manager (PM):
- The client doesn’t care how you come across, but rather how you will help them achieve their goals. They are not looking for a kick-butt PM. They need a kick-butt partner in delivering on their success
- Think first about the value of your work to the client over the quality of your plans, reports, and management tools. That is the backdrop and foundation for what you provide.
- You need to know the needs of your client’s client. Then you must determine what your client needs to deliver to that.
Your job is to help the client serve THEIR client.
Consider this as a pact worth fighting for, represented here from your (the PM’s) perspective:
“My job is to support your success in achieving the benefits and objectives of this investment of money, time, and human resources.
“I know how to deliver the project. You know how to and must deliver the organization. Success is virtually guaranteed when we both deliver on our individual role goals.
“These are not different tracks. Rather they make up both sides of the single track the project and the organization must travel together. If either side of the track fails, or any structural fault forces derailment, we are both in trouble and at fault.”
Explorer
If you are a member of an organization changing and are curious about the big deal about pulling it off successfully, check out the other role-specific thumbnail sketches of the challenges to get a feel for what needs to occur.
If you are a spectator observing an in-flight process change, you likely see evidence of things gone wrong AND right. Consider those pieces of evidence alongside what you gathered during your visit to this site. Then, tuck that knowledge away for the time in your future when you find yourself in one of the roles discussed here.
There is one constant in business: Change. And now you know there is something besides hope as a strategy to succeed.
The Change Portal™ is your gateway for taking the chance out of Change.