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Blog posted by: Donna Unitt, 05 May 2020.

We all know that organisations in this ever-competing world need to change now more quickly and deal with larger changes to the way they work now more than ever before in order to survive. Organisations face constant disruption, looking at how COVID-19 has disrupted everyone is prime example. It is also driven by competitors, change in demands and innovation. Companies like Uber, Apple, etc, have changed the business model that other companies had held for so long.

Organisations need to become more agile in order to act and change quickly to new demands. Enterprise change management can aid this. 

So what is enterprise change management? 

You may have heard of the term enterprise change management, but do you know what it is? If you answered no, then you are not alone. It basically means that in order to compete in today’s world and adapt quickly, that the organisation as a whole need to possess the skills and tools to be able to deliver change at speed – in volumes and with the agility required. It’s no longer about a project-to-project approach; it’s about change being part of the organisation’s DNA. Specifically, it’s about organisations investing time, energy and resources to build their organisational change management capabilities and competencies.

Enterprise change management is the structured and intentional deployment of change management across and throughout an organisation. With Enterprise change management, effectively managing the people side of change becomes more than a business practice, it becomes a core competency, a competitive differentiator and a cultural value of the organisation. 

Traditional change management is about the skills, processes and tools that we use to manage the people aspects of major organisational and transformational change. Enterprise change management is about making sure that change management is applied consistently across the organisation. 

In order for enterprise change management to be truly successful then change has to be business-as-usual, the new norm. The organisation must have the ability to deliver change across the organisation. The strategy has to be about building the capability, the capacity, the speed and agility to meet changing needs. 

So, if organisations already behave in an agile way, then why is enterprise change management any different? Improving agility to react to changes and market demands tends to focus on the organisation’s operations, processes, technology and its culture. whereas an organisation with enterprise change management in place will be able to: 

• apply a common set of change management processes and tools (consistently and constantly);
• deploy people from the very top of the organisation to the front line with the individual competencies required in leading change;
• ensure that the application of change management is a strategic capability within the organisation.

So, in essence, an organisation needs change management practices and processes and agility as foundations before it can consider qualifying as enterprise change management ready. In our ever-changing and ever-more unpredictable world enterprise change management is definitely a topic on many companies’ agendas and if it is not, it soon will be. 

Join the APM Hub and share your views on enterprise change management and other project management topics, designed exclusively for individual members of APM. 

About the Author

Donna Unitt is a Head of Delivery with experience in managing business relationships across an array of levels and cultures through large IT, organisation and process change projects and programmes. She has a proven track record of successful project delivery and management in large multi- million pound projects. Donna is actively growing the change management capability within Rocket Consulting Ltd, based on her experience of rolling out a similar programme at her previous company and brings over 20 years of IT solutions implementation experience including multi-implementation lifecycles across the supply chain industry to the SIG.

Donna is the APM Enabling Change Specific Interest Group Chair.