Leading business change

Make it wanted | Make it happen | Make it stick

Businesses don’t want project outputs, they want business outcomes. The investment in projects is to get benefits and sustainable change, not new systems and products.

CITI provides consultancy support to business managers who define and lead change initiatives. Our three step approach integrates best practices in change management with those in project management and focuses on delivering the business outcomes.

With over 20 years' experience working with large, often global, organisations, CITI has developed and proved its approach to delivering directed change through projects and programmes.

Developing the case for change

Make it wanted

Business owners initiate the motivation for investment in business change, but then often lose control of it as technical implementers take charge of the solution. It is at this crucial point that projects are lost. Without strong business leadership, technical solutions do not deliver the business outcomes and are difficult to integrate in the capability and culture of the operational side of the business.

The case for change is usually not just financial, and it must translate into terms that resonate with those who will have to make it work. Benefits realisation means communicating, it means specific and deliberate management of the impacts on people and processes, and it means engaging and mobilising the various sources of power and influence that determine what happens in every workplace.

Using change models that have been used to drive benefits realisation programmes in many, many major companies, CITI consultants facilitate the development of business cases and change plans, ensuring that the impacts are well defined, well communicated, shaped to achieve acceptance, and firmly under the leadership of the business owner.

Sponsoring projects – directing the change

Make it happen

Major directed change is delivered today by projects and programmes. The roles of project sponsor and project board member have a major influence on the effectiveness of the investment made in a project, and yet few organisations provide guidance on how to be a sponsor.

The habits of experienced senior line and process managers can lead them astray when they are in the role of project sponsor. Experience and research both show conclusively that it is better to have an ‘good’ sponsor than the ‘right’ sponsor – proving that project sponsorship involves much more than being a figurehead or a signatory, it means being a leader.

With modern projects involving multiple stakeholders and difficult political positioning, project governance is often made impossibly complex by the mistaken belief that dividing the governance problem makes it easier. Sharing it between executive sponsors and business owners, or worse, mixing the role of project manager with project sponsor, leads to confusion and reduced project productivity, and in some cases paralysis and failure.

CITI services include one-on-one working - acting as the ‘sponsor conscience’, and small group workshops and master-classes to share understanding of the role within the organisation. These are backed up by sponsor profiling tools, and sponsor and steering group on-boarding handy guides.

Benefits realisation – embedding the change

Make it stick

Embedding changed operational practices is often hard to achieve. The emotional impacts of change of status, change of working relationships, and change to well-practiced processes typically outweigh the objective content of the change.

To achieve sustained specific benefits means directed change of people and processes, and that usually involves the behaviours of individuals not directly impacted by the change at all. By using blended mixtures of one-on-one support, the dynamics of small groups, the use of key performance metrics and the modification of organisational culture – communicating with and the swaying of ‘crowds’ – the impacts are shaped and guided into the realisation of benefits.

CITI uses well-researched analysis tools to profile the benefits and provide business leaders with effective change management actions, as well as benefits realisation plans, against which changes in performance and financial returns are monitored.

Want to know more?

For case studies and white papers on these areas, contact Amanda Muscat at amuscat@citi.co.uk or call 01908 283600.