magine a lottery ticket with a cash prize of 1 million dollars. You decide to buy a few tickets worth $200,000 to increase your chances of winning and that’s a 20% chance of success. However, as you were about to pay, the cashier told you, you could double your chances of success by buying tickets worth $250,000. An extra $50,000 to double your chances? You can decide to take this opportunity or you could decide to turn it down.
Based on some psychological studies, all things been equal and affordability not being a problem, most people will take this opportunity, especially the optimistic ones but some others will not budge at this. While this scenario might not be realistic, it is a good example of how we should look at Organizational Change Management as a practice.
When Change Management is done well, it increases the probability of success on a project 6 times. This is huge and should not be ignored. Rather, organizations should be exploiting this opportunity to improve the realization of project objectives, RoI, rate of adoption, utilization and proficiency of their employees.
Based on the lottery example, it is obvious that there is a cost associated with adding change management. Some the cost components include:
– Change Management Resources
– Training
– Communications
– Travel
– General expenses etc.
The total cost is usually a fraction of the original project budget just like in the example.
By adding change management and increasing the project budget, organizations are able to reduce the chances of:
– Productivity plunges
– High turnover of valued employees
– Loss of motivation
– Stressed and tired employees
– Project budget overruns
– Failed and abandoned projects
– Missed milestones
– On-hold projects
– Unrealized benefits
So, will you take your chances and wing it or spend a bit more to avoid these pitfalls to achieving success on your project?
People in charge of project budgets should no longer look at Change Management as a nice-to-have but rather move it up the priority list as a must-have requirement for every project and change initiative.
