What Are My Top 3 Priorities in Planning A Change?

by Shifa

"Hi I am trying to design a program for a HR Project and wanted to know (a) what would be my top three priorites, and (b) the risks that I should be concerned about.

I am thinking about doing this for work purposes, to segrate the HR functions from a grouped company and to be independent."

Attempting to address your question from the perspective of the "change management" aspects, my top 3 priorities would be:

(1) Assessing the change legacy i.e. "what's our track record in this organisation on instigating, implementing and realising the envisaged benefits of past change initiatives".

Technically this is called a "Change Readiness Assessment".

It matters because what has happened before will heavily influence any new initiative... see here:

Change Readiness Assessments


(2) Pay close attention to the cultural implications - as this is the single biggest determinant of how people will behave.

First step is some form of simple cultural analysis looking at now and the new state.

This (as with all of this stuff on the business of successful change leadership and management) is a big subject with many interdependent - even multi-dimensional - aspects.

A good place to start is the following pages and the associated links and resources shown on each page:

Organisational Culture

The Pre-programme Review and Planning Process


(3) Having completed the steps outlined in (1) and (2) I would build your approach based on the following questions:

# How am I going to manage all this so that it happens and I succeed?

# How's it going to be different when I've made the change?

# Why am I doing this - how's it going to benefit me?
How will I know it's benefited me?

# Who's it going to affect and how will they react?
What can I do to get them "on side"?

# What are the risks and issues that I'll have to face?
What steps do I have to take to make the changes and get the benefit?

If I had to sum it all up - I would simply say focus on the people-side throughout and build and create processes that work for people (sounds clichéd - but often overlooked and very true!).