The roadies and rockstars of change management ft. Jen Frahm
Dr Jen Frahm (PhD Management) is the founder of Conversations of Change and a world-leading organisational change expert.
She has worked in culture change, process change, digital transformation, legislative change, mergers and acquisitions and technology/systems change for a wide range of industries.
Jen believes change leadership must come from the sponsors of the project, the executive level or senior management who have been formally made accountable for the success of the project – not the project manager or change manager. In this podcast, she explains to Elise Stevens why project managers need strong change leadership supporting them in order to deliver great projects.
Jen is an IABC Recommended Speaker, has a podcast series of her own, and is the author of Conversations of Change: A guide to implementing change and two e-books.
Points raised in this podcast:
- Change managers are the roadies not the rockstars.
- A project manager should never take on a project if they don’t have access to the change leaders.
- Leaders will be dependent on the project manager for data and information.
- Project managers must have built rapport and open, transparent communication with their change leaders.
- Projects with great leadership are a joy to work on.
- To get the change leader’s attention, project managers must be able to align the project vision with the business strategy.
- Empathy, business acumen and research are crucial in helping project managers in their conversations with leaders.
- Face-to-face conversations and phone calls may be old-school but they’re the best ways to communicate with stakeholders.