People derailing your programme
Ashleigh HamblingAccount Executive, SerendataThere’s a growing pressure on programme leaders to provide confidence that transformation activity will translate into business value. It’s a lot to manage.
Data, technical and business change are all moving at pace and even if status reports look green, and delivery milestones are being met, underneath there might be silent resistance, and people who will stand in the way of benefit realisation.
One workstream might be bought in. But elsewhere another could be overwhelmed and overloaded because of other, parallel transformation initiatives.
One function might have strong local leadership and clear comms. Somewhere else, people are unclear on ownership or how the future state is supposed to operate day to day. I’m sure you’ve seen how that friction can appear quite quickly.
With aggressive timelines and the expectation to deliver against the business case, it would be good to have sight of people risk ahead of go‑live, so you can minimise disengagement and operational distruption. If you’re a programme director that rolls off shortly after go‑live, you have less to be worried about. For a Head of Transformation or anyone in a perm role, you might be more concerned about the people part and what happens after go‑live.
We’re seeing organisations build capability around people and business change with a renewed focus on:
- operational readiness activity
- audience-level engagement visibility
- ownership of mitigation activity
- joined up reporting across people risk and readiness
- clearer visibility of impact hotspots, overload, and resistance before it impacts value delivery.
This means that there’s much greater confidence from the business heading into go‑live, and faster time to value, post go‑live.
The programmes getting ahead seem to be creating much more structure around the change management. They’re optimising the way that change is delivered so it’s more cost-effective and so that value doesn’t suffer.
Key areas of focus for success: