The Role of Program Management in an Organisational Change

Developed by Sebbe Sidenius Bull

Revised by Cirkeline Bräuner

In today's rapidly changing society, organisations are going through changes all the time. This causes, that organisations must be able to adapt to new market conditions, changing customer demands and emerging technology. To remain competitive in a continuously evolving business environment, organisations go through changes such as process optimisation, cost reduction or technology adoption. These are few examples of changes which affect the entire business, and it is therefore crucial that they are managed in a successful way to avoid harming the business .

Organisational change is a huge alteration for any organisation and can be a dawning task if not managed properly. In the context of project management, organisational change refers to any significant alteration in an organisation that affects the way projects are planned, executed and managed. Managers within the organisation must be able to identify the potential impact of changes in their projects and adapt their project management approach accordingly to ensure successful project delivery .

In this regard, program management can serve as an effective tool for managing organisational change. With its comprehensive toolbox of evaluative methods, program management offers a structured approach to assessing each potential change project. This toolbox supports change managers in providing an overview of the change project, ensuring efficient project execution, promoting project alignment, evaluating risks, mapping stakeholders and identifying potential benefits. All of these elements work together to facilitate a more effective and efficient change management process .

First of all, this article provides an introduction to what change management is and different models are involved to describe the process of organisational change. In addition, the four core perspectives of this course, purpose, people, complexity and uncertainty, are used to describe the difficulties and challenges of going through an organisational change. Afterwards, an introduction to program management is given. Then, the two management fields are combined into one common understand of how program management can be applied in organisational change. Lastly, the benefits and limitations of organisational changes using program management are discussed.

Change management

Change management is an approach of transitioning individuals, groups, teams or organisations from one state to another state. This article considers change management from the point of view of organisations. To understand what change management is, it is necessary to understand what a change is. This will be further elaborated below.

What is change?

"The act or result of something becoming different" or "The process of replacing something with something new or different" are two examples of a definition of what a change is.

A change is simply a variation in the common way of doing things. It refers to any modification, alteration or transformation in something from its previous state to a new state. Changes occur everywhere and is an opportunity to make or become different through new ways of acting. Changes can be temporary or permanent, positive or negative and gradual or sudden. It can be a source of growth and development as well as a source of challenges and difficulties .

Changes are defined as either incremental or radical. An incremental change is a change which happens gradually over time. It involves making small adjustments of an already existing system to improve efficiency, effectiveness and performance. An example of an incremental change is making small step-by-step adjustments in an organisation's strategy. Radical change, on the other hand, is different from incremental change as it involves making a significant change such as introducing a completely new business strategy. Both types of changes can be beneficial for different purposes and choosing the right approach depends on the context .

What is change management?

In the section above, the definition of a change was briefly described. This leads to the next topic, which deals with what change is seen from a management point of view.

A simple way to describe change management is with an example. An example of a company which went through a huge organisational change in respond to the COVID-19 pandemic is the Danish jewellery brand Pandora. The company recognised the need for adapt to changing customer behaviour and preferences through new technology adoption, as more customers were shopping online during the pandemic. For instance, the company introduced a video chat to enable that socially distanced customers could chat online with staff members. Other new digital features included the possibility to try on jewellery through virtual simulation and allowing customers to buy products online and collect them in physical stores .

Although Pandora went through a successful organisational change, there is unfortunately not a single recipe for applying change management in organisations as the is no one-size-fits-all approach. The process has to be tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of the organisation. However, back in 1951 the psychologist Kurt Lewin has represented a simplified way of viewing a change process .

As illustrated in the Figure 1, the change process is divided into three distinct stages; freeze, change and refreeze.

Figure 1: Kurt Lewin's three step change management process (created by Cirkeline, inspired by )

1. Unfreeze: The first stage of the change management process characterises the starting point of the change process where the organisation prepares for the change. This involves creating awareness about the need for the change, identifying current behaviours and to get people to let go of their old ways of thinking and working .
2. Change: The second stage involves implementing the change through planning, communication and execution. The objective is to create new ways of thinking and working. During this phase, people must be trained and educated to adopt new methods and behaviours and to overcome any obstacles that may arise .
3. Refreeze: The third stage addresses making the new change permanent. The objective is to reinforce the new behaviours, ensuring that they become a part of the organisation's culture. During this phase, the focus is on stabilising the new ways of thinking and working and creating a sense of ownership among employees .

What are the steps in an organisational change process?

Figure 2: Change management process (created by Cirkeline Bräuner, inspired by )

As mentioned above the change management process does not follow a specific recipe and different models such as Lewis' model can be used to describe the process. However, the author John Hayes proposed another model for change management in his book The Theory and Practice of Change Management from 1998 . Opposite Lewis' model, this model is presented as a more iterative process emphasising that change management is a process with each stage informing and building on the previous stage. Moreover, this models does also include the people perspective of the change. Moreover, this model is also more detailed as it contained more clearly defined stages.

As can be seen on Figure 2, the model is divided into five stages; recognising and starting, diagnosing, planning, implementing and sustaining. These stages are further described below.

1. Recognising and starting: The first stage corresponds to the unfreeze stage in Lewis' model. It involves recognising the need for change and acknowledging the specific challenges that drive the need for change within the organisation.
2. Diagnosing: The next stage covers diagnosing what needs to be changed and formulating a vision for the desired future state.
3. Planning: Once the diagnosis is complete, the organisation develops an appropriate plan for implementing the change. This plan should consider various factors, including resource allocation, budget estimation, timelines and potential risks.
4. Implementing: After the change has been planed, the organisation starts implementing it in its operations.
5. Sustaining: During the last stage, the changed is sustained and reviewed ensuring that the change is fully integrated in the organisation.

In addition to the five phases, the model also includes reviews and managing people issues during all phases. The involvement of the people perspective in this model highlights the importance of people in an organisational change process. People are a critical component of organisational change processes as they are the ones who must ultimately implement and adopt the change.

Why is organisational change a difficult task?

To better understand and visualise why organisational change can be a difficult task to manage, the topic is viewed from the point of view of the four core perspectives introduced in the course; purpose, people, complexity and uncertainty . The challenges related to change management within each perspective are briefly described below. In addition, the four perspectives are visualised in Figure 3, where the core of each perspective is described by a question.

Figure 3: The four perspectives of project management (created by Cirkeline Bräuner, inspired by )

1. Purpose: Before even introducing a change process within an organisation, it is important to clearly define the purpose. Defining the purpose of the change clearly and communicating it to the rest of the organisation can be a challenging task. However, it ensures that the goal and objectives of the change are aligned with the organisation's strategy.
2. People: It is human to make mistakes, and as change processes are driven by people, mistakes are also likely to occur. However, people are a necessity to create awareness of the need for the change in the first place. Furthermore, it is also people who are affected by the change.
3. Complexity: A change process can be complex to implement successfully in an organisation. This is for instance due to the fact that the process involves difficult tasks such as important decisions, multiple stakeholder, clear communication and effective leadership.
4. Uncertainty: Organisational change processes do often involve uncertainty. While the organisation may have a clear purpose of what it wants to achieve, there may be limited information, unforeseen challenges or unintended outcomes that cannot be predicted in advance.

Program management

Changes are often managed less effectively than they might be as those responsible for managing the change fails to handle some of the critical factors of the process as presented above. Not managing the change process in a successful way can impact the entire organisation negatively and ultimately result in the organisation not surviving. In this context, program management and its comprehensive toolbox can be applied to facilitate a more successful change management process.

What is program management?

Program management is a discipline which involves managing a collection of related projects that are designed to achieve a specific goal or objective. Program managers are responsible for ensuring that all projects within a program are aligned with the organisations common strategy and goals, also when changes occur .

Programs are defined by benefits and projects; programs attend to achieve benefits, where the benefits are achieved through execution of projects within the program. The success of a program is measured on to what extend the benefits are achieved. As defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI), programs aim to achieve benefits through the application of five performance areas :

1. Strategy alignment: Strategy alignment refers to the process of ensuring that the programs and projects being implemented within an organisation are fully aligned with the overall strategy.
2. Benefits management: Benefit management refers to the management of the benefits a program is aiming to achieve. The purpose of this area is that the program delivers the intended outcomes to the organisation.
3. Stakeholder engagement: All programs contains stakeholders and the various stakeholders have different interests and requirements. This area refers to the process identifying and engaging with the relevant stakeholders who are affected by the program.
4. Governance: Governance includes to the set of policies, procedures and practices that are put in place to ensure that programs are managed effectively and efficiently.
5. Life cycle management: Life cycle management covers the process of managing the program and maximising the benefits throughout the entire life cycle.

Each of these five areas serves tools within program management. The areas will later be used to create the connection between program management and an organisational change process presented in Figure 2 earlier in the article.

Application of program management in organisational change

COMBINE THE FIVE AREAS OF MEASURING PROGRAM MANAGEMENT SUCCESS WITH THE MODEL OF CHANGE

Change management and program management do often work in parallel with each other in an organisation.

As described above, a program manager is responsible for managing a group of related projects. By managing these project as a group, a program manager must ensure that the changes being implemented are aligned with the rest of the projects as well as with the organisation's common strategy.

https://dti.delaware.gov/about-dti/offices/office-chief-policy-communications/change-management/

Program management plays an important role in the overall functioning of an organisation, especially when it comes to implementing change processes. This causes, that program management provides a structured approach to manage change initiatives.

Program framework: https://www.projectsmart.com/articles/framework-for-programme-management.php

Benefits and limitations

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND LIMITATIONS OF COMBINING THESE MANAGEMENT FIELDS?

Limitation: As we have seen, different models can be used to describe the process of implementing organisational change (Lewin and Hayes). This can make it difficult for companies to create a structure for the change as there simply are so many ways of doing it.

The is no one-size-fits-all approach. The process has to be tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of the organisation

Benefits:

Annotated bibliography

ADD ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

From old article: 2010, The Theory and Practice of Change Management, John Hayes

2011, Facilitation Change, Lauge Baungaard Rasmussen

1996, Leading Change, John P. Kotter