Change Management by PMI

Nowadays, most companies keep competing ferociously, but only a few will achieve sustainability in the long term. There is a difference between survival and sustainability. Any organization is really sustainable when it can adapt itself to the changing environment, being today much more changing than in the 90s. We don't need to change everything, however. Organizations must keep faithful to their principles about vision and mission, but anything else is subject to change: Change must be allowed in order to gain more contracts, increase benefits and value to shareholders. Change may produce more sales to customers, of better quality products. Change could bring a better workplace for people, following optimal processes supporting the business.

Plenty of books have been written about change management already. In this blog you can read some texts by Tom DeMarco, who has developed admirably the psychological factor of the organizational change and the human behavior at corporate change.

In order to learn about the non-psychological aspects of organizational change, I must recommend this document recently published by PMI, entitled Managing Change in Organizations. You can download it (for free, for a limited time) visiting PMI website at the following link: http://www.pmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Change-Management/Change-Management-Form.aspx

I think this document by PMI is specially relevant for many reasons, including:

• It recollects and summarizes the globally accepted practice and approaches on business change management (don't miss the references in the bibliography section; many of them are for free download, as well).
• It proposes a practical framework to face organizational change at the level of portfolios, programs and projects. I think I've understood these PMI standards better after reading these sections.
• It develops admirably what is the role of Portfolio Managers, Program Managers and Project Managers as agents of change in organizations.

This final reason is the most important for me. If we are managing projects, programs or portfolios, then we are agents of change. Our company may change to sustainability if the top managers take the right decisions about strategy and finance. This is right, but... Somebody will have to take the responsibility of getting things done, and somebody will have to implement change effectively. Who are they?

Click here to read the Spanish version of this article

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