Change Manager

The change manager is responsible for coordinating the activities required to effect organizational change. This individual has the overall responsibility of steering the initiative forward, where the change, when implemented, becomes the “way the organization works.” A change manager must be an expert in dealing with myriad focal points that he or she must juggle simultaneously, being sure that each piece falls into place at the appropriate time. The change manager must be certain that everything comes together when it is time for the change to be implemented and needs to make decisions from an informed basis when differences become difficult to resolve among his or her committee members. A change manager who is doing his or her job works to remove the obstacles from the paths of the change steering committee members, as well as from the members of all of the other subcommittees so that they can all perform their jobs.

The change manager should be accessible during all phases of the change process. In addition, the change manager should be actively involved in each of the activities of the change initiative. Only with a hands-on approach can the change manager know what is actually happening at each stage of the process. Participating in the required training provides valuable information— formally by “knowing” rather than just “knowing about” what is happening in each committee and informally through holding discussions with the committee members who contribute to the decisions about the change. Upper management must always debate whether the change manager should be someone internal to the company or an external consultant. There are pros and cons to this issue, and each situation requires the consideration of different factors.

An external consultant as a change manager is likely to be quite objective in carrying out his or her duties. While the external consultant certainly has some history with the organization and its key players, in this role, he or she does not work directly for any specific department or division. Employees will view this change manager as relatively unbiased toward any actions that he or she will recommend for the change steering committee. In many cases, employees will also view the external change manager as more credible, due to his or her breadth of experience with several other organizations.

We have worked with and talked with companies who have hired external consultants that felt at the end of the initiative that perhaps they should have gone internal. An outside consultant, unless he or she is paid on the basis of the success of the change or guarantees a certain amount of savings (which is rare), does not have as much invested in the success of the change as an existing employee who will work there after the change is implemented and who has to face other people in the company. He or she may possibly have to sponsor or steer other change projects. However, if your company does not have the expertise in-house and cannot hire someone directly, you will have to use a consultant. The ultimate question is whether you have the expertise to proceed. This job falls to HR professionals who can scour your organization for candidates. Here is the actual experience of one company we heard about that decided to use an outside consultant as change manager for a project: A company that produced golf carts was getting a bad reputation because, six to eight months after they manufactured a cart, the bumpers fell off. The bolt that held the bumpers in place was a snap bolt that, once put into place, should not have been able to work itself loose. The company paid a very high-dollar manufacturing consultant to find a solution to the problem.

The consultant reviewed the designs and could find no problem. He finally went to the manufacturing floor and asked the assembly line workers why the bumpers might be falling off. The assembly line workers pointed out that they did not turn the bolt the entire distance (from 3 o’clock to 9 o’clock) because it scraped their knuckles. They only turned the bolt from 3 o’clock to 7 o’clock. Since the bumper problem was not immediately apparent as the carts came off of the assembly line, the carts went to the field in seemingly good condition. An engineer would never have realized this problem because he or she never went to the floor.

The solution that the consultant suggested was to remanufacture the bolt at a significant cost to the company. The solution worked. A few months after the consultant had been paid and the company had remanufactured the bolt, a supervisor thought to ask what the assemblymen thought of the new bolt. They all agreed that the redesign was much better because they no longer scraped their knuckles and could tighten the bolt completely. But one assemblyman commented, “I don’t know why you didn’t just give me an extension for my wrench.”

This example shows that some of the best ideas may actually reside inside an organization, and that the use of an external source may be superfluous.