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Finding_A_Great_Change_Management_Consultant
| Finding A Great Change Management Consultant
Change management consultants aren’t too hard to find; if they
perform properly, they work themselves out of every job! But
when you’re planning massive restructuring for your company, you
want the best change management consultant you can locate.
What To Look For In a Change Management Consultant
Any change management consultant you consider seriously should
have three things:
- Executive experience, preferably in your industry; -
Experience bringing multiple companies successfully through a
business realignment process, preferably the same one you’re
planning for your company; - Experience with managing change in
companies similar to yours in both structure and industry.
In other words, the perfect change management consultant for
your business would be one who’s done exactly what you’re doing
with two or three of your competitors.
But that’s not all you should look for in your change management
consultant. He or she should also mesh well with your current
management team. A poor choice in consultant would be someone
that your key employees (note the multiple!) dislike. Your
company needs to work as a team to successfully complete change,
and dissention with your change management consultant will
undermine everything you’re trying to do.
If one or two key employees dislike your change management
consultant prospect while everyone else likes him or her fine,
you need to ask yourself what’s setting this employee off. Is it
really something about the change management consultant? Or is
there a possibility that your employee is worried about losing
his or her job during the process of your business’s
transformation? You need to sit down with that employee and find
out before ruling out that change management consultant; he’s
not there to be everyone’s friend, after all.
The Use and Feeding of Your Change Management Consultant
Your change management consultant will probably be able to give
you a very good idea of how he or she can best be used by your
company; this is a question you need to ask them during your
interview process. Change management consultants can be used for
every stage of your company’s restructuring, from helping you
come up with a plan with timelines to organizing your committees
to training your staff on change management to helping everyone
adjust to the changes being made.
You need to ensure your change management consultant is kept in
the loop. Change is hard, and some of your employees, maybe even
those you would least suspect, are going to resist. Have an
open-door policy for your change management consultant – and a
closed-door policy for any private communication between the two
of you. Private meetings for updates and questions about
difficult situations are absolutely essential. Your change
management consultant should feel comfortable asking to go to
most of your company’s meetings, and should be encouraged to get
a feel for what everyone does. Part of what your change
management consultant does is efficiency analysis; but in order
to find redundancies and other structural problems, they need to
have open access to everything.
With open communication between you and your carefully-selected
change management consultant, your company’s transition should
go smoothly and calmly.
About the author:
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.managementpilot.com.
Learn about change management, interim management, project
management, corporate governance, management consulting and
business development.
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