London Project and Programme Management Forum

By Melanie Franklin, CEO at Maven Training

The event was the London Project and Programme Management Forum. This even happens twice each year and on this occasion was hosted at the London Borough of Lewisham. The event is designed to bring Project and Programme Managers from London Local authorities together to share ideas, best practises and success stories. The focus was on Change Management and there were about 90 people in attendance most of whom are from Local Authorities, Met Police and the Fire and Ambulance Services.

I was really pleased to be asked to speak at this event, as embedding change is a subject we are repeatedly asked to design workshops for. Many of our clients are currently planning and implementing change programmes and are keen for practical guidance on how to make the change relevant to all who are impacted by it. It is this relevance that drives their involvement enabling individuals to see a reason for becoming involved and for adopting the change for themselves.

In my presentationg I explored a range of different perspectives that individuals typically take when evaluating an organisational change. The first evaluation is always how it will impact them and their position within the organisation, with pessimists often seeing the change in a negative light, seeing it as a criticism of the work they do today. Optimists can see the change as a way to fix current problems and provide them with new career development opportunities, but can sometimes lose heart when they realise the change does not offer them all of the advantages they had originally associated it with.

In order to address these extremes of view, and all points in between, all activities and communications about the change need to target how people learn, their preferences for receiving information and where they are in their own 'cycle of change' remembering that some people adapt to change very quickly, constantly seeking out the next change and how they can become involved in it, and others will be slower as their resistance to change is much greater.

During my presentation there was lots of notes being taken and at the end there were a number of questions about how to practically address those that resist change, clearly indicating that this is the biggest challenge that we face in change programmes.

Other speakers included Barry Quirk – Chief Exec at Lewisham, Steve Gough – Director of Programme Management and Property at Lewisham, Stephen Jenner – Director, Criminal Justice I.T, Tim Ellis – Kensington and Chelsea and Richard Caton – LB Hackney. Outperform also gave an update on the London Programme Management Methodology.