It’s been a year since I took on leading the Organizational Change Management team at Shared Services Canada to:

👥 rebuild the team
📈 mature it’s service model
💼 upskill employees in change management
🤝 continue to deliver change management as a service

A short post on how it’s going.

In building my team, I noticed that change management is still fairly new in governemnt with few working directly in “it”.

That said, many have navigated change and have the soft skills/potential to transition into this work – that’s how I’ve hired!

(Shout out to my amazing team 🙌🏼)

Our team, unlike other change management shops in government delivers change management as a service – almost like a mini internal consulting firm. To offer improved consistency and experience, we’ve redefined what that service looks like (end-to-end, targeted, advisory) to support our clients.

Leading change is not a copy and paste exercise, but there are best practices, tools and steps that can be captured for consistency. That’s why I’m working on an internal playbook to support new team members in how we offer support to guide their questions, analysis and recommendations.

We then hope to translate this into an external playbook that can be used by clients to navigate change, with a supporting self-service portal of tools and templates. This way we can serve as more of an advisory role and promote embedded change management capacity in project teams.

One of my observations has been the placement of change management practitioners. Arguably, every project team should have change management resources embedded. As “consultants” we have to onboard to new files and teams regularly to offer support but if orgs built capacity directly in teams, the integration would be a lot better!

That’s why we’re working on upskilling employees in change management so at a minimum, a foundation of change management can be initiated in project teams where we then play a larger advisory role than delivery. To do so, we launched a joint human centred community of practice (with our sister shop in service design) to offer learning, coaching, and more in both fields!

In delivering change management as a service, it’s obvious in many instances that we’ve become the new buzzword in government (see ya agile👋🏼). But when prioritized, resourced and arguably done right, change management can improve adoption and implementation of all the many changes underway.

I’m fortunate to work for an org that values the people side of change so that we can prepare, equip and support individuals to successfully adopt change and drive organizational success and outcomes forward. As we continue to modernize our services, change management will be key to this work.

If you’re interested in learning more about change management:
💻 visit Canada School of Public Service for great initial courses
🪪 get certified with Prosci (a leading change management methodology)
🌠 dig deeper with Being First, Inc.
☕️ or reach out for an informal chat

Maybe this is where your career path takes you next!