We have all experienced situations whereby the business has to change for some very good reasons but the initiative struggles to be effective and once the solution goes live true angst exists in the people that have to live with the result. We have found that often these changes may be structurally well-defined but the change agents have not applied the same degree of rigour or professionalism to human behaviours that they did to the technical / procedural aspects. In most cases this aspect of the transformation is poorly understood and haphazardly done if at all.

This workshop will deal with the thorny problem of getting real holistic change to happen without the extreme pain that often comes with the challenge. Using a business change scenario in a series of working sessions, the delegates will apply a simple set of techniques that can be integrated with the typical initiative activities to connect the so-called ‘soft’ side with the ‘hard’ side. We will cover some aspects of classic ‘change management’ but reach beyond them to include the issues of motivation, culture change and behavioural sustainability showing how these are critical and must be designed in from the start not added on at the end.

• Redefining the work: the business process baseline
• Developing the competencies: the core skills needed
• Evolving the culture: specifying the group behaviour as a set of requirements
• Overcoming resistance: navigating internal stakeholder concerns
• Communication: what to say and when
• Sustaining the journey: measuring, monitoring and coaching of the team as part of the process forever