It’s Never too Late for Change Management

“It’s never too late.”

That’s what I told my new client just moments into our first meeting in early 2020. 

This global marketing SaaS business unit had been acquired just six months earlier by a PE firm and was being re-launched as a new company (in 90 days!) with staff in over a dozen countries. Pretty much everything was changing – corporate name, branding, senior personnel, benefits, roles, job titles, culture, ways of working, systems, policies.  

There was immense pressure on project team members and employees, stemming from the new board’s ambitious timeline.

That’s when I was called in to help. An important element right off the bat was not to slow things down. They were on a challenging journey and the stress level was high.

My job was to work quickly with them to figure out how to align the change management mission with the varied perspectives of employees and the overall objectives of the program. 

Here are three things to keep in mind when you’re late getting to the change management work:
1. Assessing change impact is foundational, especially with a late start; do it quickly.
2. Doing everything isn’t the mission. Doing as much of the right stuff that you can is.
3. There is time… until there isn’t. Radiate confidence. Your team needs you to. 

So yes, it was late to be starting… But it’s never too

late (well, almost never).