Change Management Is Not a Cure-All

Well executed change management can significantly increase support for projects and adoption of new processes and systems. But it is not a magic wand. Even the best change management cannot get people to support poorly run projects or adopt poorly designed processes and systems.

By Kevin Turgeon

17 April 2024

Good change management can dramatically increase staff and stakeholder support for well-executed projects. Similarly, it can significantly speed up user adoption of well-designed processes and systems. However, change management cannot substantially increase support for projects that are poorly run or increase the adoption of processes and systems that do not work well.

The objective of change management is to increase the return on investment of organizational change projects by increasing staff and stakeholder support for such projects and speeding up user adoption of the new processes and systems created by such projects. In the right situations, good change management can meet this objective. This is evidenced by the numerous organizations that have implemented change management practices and seen substantial increases in project returns as a result.

Change management can help organizations substantially increase support for projects and speed up the adoption of new processes and systems, but it can only do so when projects are well-executed and processes and systems are well-designed. Even the best change management cannot significantly increase staff and stakeholder support for projects with overly aggressive timelines, poorly defined or unrealistic objectives, or insufficient budgets. Likewise, change management cannot substantially increase user adoption of processes and systems that are hard to use, lack required functionality, or otherwise significantly fail to meet users’ needs.

Not only can change management not increase support for poorly executed projects and adoption of poorly designed processes and systems, it can in some cases actually decrease support and adoption of such things. Staff and stakeholders can tell when a project is being poorly run, and users can tell when a process or system is poorly designed and does not meet their needs. Organizations that run large-scale change management efforts in hopes of increasing support and adoption for such projects, processes, and systems not only waste their time and money trying to win people over to something they are most likely never going to get on board with, they run the risk of alienating their staff and stakeholders by making them feel lied to. Change management efforts of this type come across as smoke-and-mirrors marketing efforts and further turn people off from supporting projects and adopting processes and systems. They also damage an organization’s credibility and make it that much harder to gain support for future projects.

Good change management works in concert with well-executed project management and high-quality process and system design to create projects, processes, and systems that people want to support and adopt. But just like all the exercise in the world cannot overcome the negative health consequences of a horrible diet and terrible sleep habits, change management, regardless of how well it is done, cannot overcome poor project execution and bad process and system design.

Change management has proved its value by helping numerous organizations increase the return on investment of organizational change initiatives. However, it is not a cure-all. Change management cannot overcome major shortcomings in other areas of projects. Specifically, it cannot make staff and stakeholders support poorly executed projects, and it cannot make people want to use poorly designed processes and systems. Moreover, utilizing change management to try to overcome such shortcomings can often backfire and make staff and stakeholders less supportive of initiatives, and make the change management effort for the next project that much more difficult.