Leadership and Change Management what gives?

Change Management. It is a term that we are always talking to potential customers about and stressing the importance of, as a fundamental process to the success of any ECM based project.

But time and time again I hear from these same people, who have decided to implement themselves or with others, about the issues they are having getting people in the organisation to use the system (technology) chosen and how difficult this is.

Well it is no surprise. Change management is often spoken about in great terms, but rarely carefully considered, especially with regards the time, money and resources required to really make an impact to the organisation to change from the current mind set and work practise to the new "ways of working" that the solution provides for.

There seems to be a general understanding in organisations that change management is important, but sometimes there is no resulting commitment for what it takes to make the change happen. The best recount that I have seen of change management was the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in the UK.

They implemented a records and document management system and key to the implementation was a solid change management process, now the emphasis is on process. At the Conference I attended the presenter that was from DTI discussed in depth how they constructed their Change journey.

This journey was planned and executed with the focus on letting the people know what was going to happen, why it was happening and what they needed to do about. The best part was where after doing all this there was then a plan to ensure that each group was ready and led through the change into the new system.