Change Management and Dealing with Resistance

Abstract

These days, almost every project initiative leads to small or large changes in the core organisation. Innovation nearly always affects some of a company’s business processes. It leads to new operational structures, to different organisational units, to previous work becoming unnecessary, to services being defined differently. The changes always lead to the people involved having to change their activities, their behaviour or even their attitude. And in order to take people along on that journey of change, a project management approach that concentrates purely on objective goals will not suffice. More focused project activities and project leadership are needed in order to help people engage with the changes that impact on behaviour. And this becomes all the more important given that expectations around the time taken to implement change are getting ever shorter. The ongoing coordinated measures taken around these changes can be referred to as change management (Fig. 21.1).