It has been a busy start to 2016 for the Project, Change & Transformation Practice at Ampersand. With Laura Frazer now on board heading up our Melbourne Project Services portfolio, we have been connecting and collaborating with our clients across Melbourne. We have been leveraging these networks and insights across our international business into Asian and European markets with the common themes of growth and change still firmly on the corporate agenda.

We have clients who are growing their businesses globally, adding new product lines or undergoing growth through acquisition.  While the landscape in these firms will be changing towards the end of the year even into 2017, the upfront planning is key to a successful outcome.  By bringing on an experienced OCM Consultant to work closely across the ELT through this upfront planning phase has proved to be a major factor in the success of these transformations.

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Change Management in Agile/Lean Environments

Another hot topic for clients this year is utilising change managers within an agile or lean environment.  We are seeing more progressive clients setting up “Labs” where they are able to fail fast on projects and having a change manager who understands how to work in sprints and adapt their change approach is becoming essential. Ampersand have a range of Change Managers who have worked on agile projects, however I believe the demand will only increase.

Having worked with Program and Project Managers for the past 25 years I find camps to be divided over the benefits of agile and waterfall and when it’s applicable.  Add the need for change management and depending on the maturity of an organisation and its understanding of change, the function is in danger of getting watered down. To gain further understanding around change in an agile/lean environment I reached out to Charlotte Mawle who is based out of Perth. She is an OCM Consultant who also runs Lean Change Management workshops.  Her synopsis below of “What is lean change management, why and how can it help”, is clear and concise.

Charlotte will be here in Melbourne mid-May running a workshop. If you are keen to learn more about Charlotte’s offering, you can read more atwww.changeoptimised.com.au.

What is Lean Change Management?

Lean Change Management is a feedback driven approach to managing change.  It uses the proven principals of Agile software development and Lean Start Up and combines them with knowledge from psychology and human development to deliver a unique, tailored toolkit that manages change in a disruptive environment.

Why now?

We are living in an age of constant change and disruption where organisational agility and implementing change is not only a competitive advantage but necessary for survival.  Established methods of managing change are generally based on a waterfall delivery approach, where you plan all your activities in advance and any modification to these activities is often frowned upon, even seen as poor management.  For many organisations today this approach is not producing the results where agility, feedback and responsiveness are needed.

How can Lean Change Management help?

The Lean Change Management model is very simple based on an iterative model of generating insights, assessing options and conducting experiments.  The approach is centred on collaboration and co-creation of change using innovative unique tools which have come from a range of disciplines.  For example, change canvases, blast radius, culture hacking and Lean Coffee.  As a new approach to managing change the model challenges existing paradigms.  Is it the answer to developing change agility and delivering results?  There is no magic solution but Lean Change and the mind-set it develops is certainly one-way people and organisations can optimise the way changes are delivered in the age of disruption.

Ampersand are working closely with a number of highly experienced Consultants who have worked with ELT’s on business transformations from the health sector, education, insurance and financial services industries.  If you are keen to engage a Change Consultant to work with your business through this evolving and disruptive business landscape, please get in touch.

This article was first published on my LinkedIn account.