Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Internal Consultants play a unique role in driving successful change in organizations across the globe. Not only do they support the specific solution development and expertise, and sometimes the project management support, but they are often times a key player in the change management activities that support project implementation. This two-part tutorial includes an overview of internal consulting and a look at how internal consultants support change management. The first part is written by Dr. William Trotter, Managing Director of the Association of Internal Management Consultants, and looks at the role of Internal Consultants. The second part is from Tim Creasey, Prosci's Director of Research and Development, focusing on the role of internal consultants in supporting effective change management implementation.
It is also important to understand the essential dynamics of managing a consulting type of organization. The AIMC has developed a number of tools/frameworks to help organizations better manage IC services. The first is the IC Operations Model which provides key insights in the areas of: client relationship management, operating processes such as contracting, culture and people including staffing and development. This is linked to the IC Performance Measurement (Balanced Scorecard) System which provides key measurements in the financial, internal process, customer and innovation/learning areas to help ensure a balanced results focus. The next tool to be provided is the IC Competency Model, which will be presented at our AIMC National Conference in April. This has competencies for both individual contributors and IC leaders/managers, which will be linked to skill-building programs.
Team structure 1 shows an existing member or group from the project team taking on the change management activities. In this case, the change management team does have the project knowledge and background, but may lack change management experience or expertise. Team structure 2 is the use of Internal Consultants - whether or not they have the title "Internal Consultant" - to support a project team and sponsor on the change management front. Many internal consultants attend Prosci's change management certification program. These consultants tend to serve in a support role on projects in the organization, developing and delivering change management strategy and plans to internal clients. Many times these individuals are formally HR
consultants, communication specialists, OD consultants, part of the Project Management Office or a separate strategy or transformation staff. In some cases, organizations are formalizing the role of the Change Management Office or the Change Management Consultant.
The internal change management consultant has much of the responsibility for strategizing and planning the change management program, but there are a number of other 'doers' who must execute the plans. As an illustration, think about one finding from Prosci's 2007 Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking report with 426 participants from 59 countries. Participants were asked, "who do employees prefer to hear messages about change from?" Resoundingly, there were two preferred senders of change messages. First, employees want to hear from someone at the top of the organization about the business reasons for the change - e.g. why it is happening, what are the risks of not changing, why the change is happening now. Second, employees want to hear from their direct supervisors about the personal impacts of the change how will this change impact my day-to-day work, how will it impact our group. Employees do not want to hear from HR, or a communications specialist, or the project leader or the change management consultant. They want to hear from someone at the top and the person they report to. So, the role of the change management resource is to enable the preferred senders (senior business leader and managers/supervisors) to deliver these messages. They can segment the audience, create talking points, build presentations and even schedule communication events, but the messages should be delivered by the preferred sender. Prosci released a Roles in change management tutorial that describes the different 'doers' required for successful change. It outlines how the change management resource - or internal change management consultant - plays a role in energizing, activating and enabling these different players.