The Human Change Management Body of Knowledge (HCMBOK®)

Vicente Goncalves, Carla Campos

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351032803
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

"I am happy to recommend this work. I believe in the principles presented in it and identify with its context. Due to the lack of knowledge on the subject in the market, it is a topic that must be made known. The book should be in the library of all project and change managers."— Paul Dinsmore, PMI Fellow

"Every manager should integrate HCMBOK ® practices into their project management methodology in order to fully develop their work. This book addresses a simple and practical way that the critical component in organizational change management can be applied to projects of all kinds: the human factor."— Bruno Machado, Director, Project Management Office, Grupo Anima Educação

"We live in a time of change, speed, and an avalanche of information. It is still very difficult for most companies to change their organizational culture efficiently. This book makes us reflect upon the crucial element in any change, and which most managers do not place in the foreground—the people." — Joyce Meyer, CEO, iDigo

"In today's constantly changing world, the Project Manager must have sensitivity to how people react to change. Knowing a method that provides a structured way to take care of the human aspect is a key factor in the success of any project! HCMBOK ® offers a simple and practical approach to managing change, which can be easily incorporated into the project management routine, providing amazing results."— Pedro Augusto Cardoso da Silva, Engineering Director, METRÔRIO

This reference starts by presenting the concept of change management, its players, strategies, and applicable models. In the second part, the book covers the set of good practices, methodology, and tools known as the HCMBOK ® — Human Change Management Body of Knowledge. The third part introduces the concept of the Change Management Office (CMO) and its relation to the strategic planning of an organization. The book concludes with the competencies essential for a change manager, an approach to agile methodologies, and a model for managing cultural change.

Chapter 1

Everything Changes, Everything Passes

1.1. A New Era in the Management of the Human Factor in Projects

The Human Factor in Project Leadership in the Third Millennium

Knowledge of project management has evolved a lot over the past 30 years, but only recently has it started to consider management of the human factor as a key area of expertise for professionals involved in project management.

In the past, good project managers were those who achieved their goals within the expected timeframe and cost parameters, with the quality and scope defined at the outset. Today, executive management and shareholders expect them to go further, requiring that projects deliver the strategic objectives that motivated the undertaking, that is, what the organization expected would change after the project.

This challenge includes an even more complex and unpredictable component than processes, hardware, or software—the human being. No matter how good the product or service delivered as a result of a project is, it will only bring value to the organization if people use it properly.

Since the beginning of this decade, a movement has been growing to make management of the human factor popular among project, process, and human resources professionals as well as leaders in all areas.

If, in the past, this was a discipline for experts, academics, and psychologists only, today the third generation of organizational change management has turned managing the human factor into a key competence for professionals of the third millennium.

Over the past decades, the pressure for organizations to remain competitive and profitable has led to the development of new tactics, such as process re design, implementation of technological components, restructuring, and mergers and acquisitions, among many other projects that required a strong adaptation of the human component to the organizational environment.

The promises that justified huge investments in management models based on technologies of the information age, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and business intelligence (BI), among others, have generated expectations that were not always met, leaving a legacy of frustration in many organizations. Despite the massive capital investments, shareholders and top managers realized that the success of the projects depended greatly on people to achieve their business goals.

In the 1940s, Kurt Lewin put forth the first theories about human behavior during change processes. Lewin, considered by many thought leaders to be the father of social psychology, inspired a host of thinkers in the 1980s and 1990s who shaped the first generation that established the structure of the discipline we know today as organizational change management.

Until the middle of the 1990s, change management was rarely applied in projects. It was limited to a small group of companies in the forefront of human factor management that used the knowledge of experts to support Human Resources.

Moving against the psychological line, the so-called Big Five, the five largest global consulting firms, developed an operational change management approach, which almost always focused on organizational impacts, training, and communication, applied especially in the implementation of ERP projects.

The next wave of change saw the emergence of frameworks being adopted as standards for some companies—the major milestone of the second generation of organizational change management.

Even today, these approaches, which originated from academic models or highly specialized consulting firms, are inspiring references that are often used by change management experts. However, they are seldom well understood and do not adequately sensitize technical executives and project managers. It is very difficult for the logical, Cartesian, and quantitative thinking of exact science professionals to translate into practical project activities proposals such as “create a sense of urgency.”

At the turn of the millennium, a large number of professionals from these consulting firms created small companies that helped consolidate change management as a crucial practice, especially in strategic or large projects.

However, the world went on changing, and so did change management. Failures in large change projects, especially in the technological world, kept piling up, while those responsible for project management offices (PMOs) and project managers realized that, without people, projects can meet their deadlines and achieve their cost, scope, and quality goals, but they do not always achieve the strategic objectives that motivated the investment.

Beginning early in the 21st century, the spread of the practice of managing organizational changes by global consulting firms attracted the attention of experts in the area. They began to organize into professional associations with the objective of developing standards, processes, and a code of ethics for change managers. Thus began the third generation of organizational change management—a well-organized structure initiated by the major consulting firms, which contributed a significant amount of professional knowledge.

In 2012, change management took on a new character in the translation of the hermetic language of experts and academic masters into the practical and objective world of project managers with the creation of the Human Change Management Institute (HUCMI^®) and its base of knowledge, The Human Change Management Body of Knowledge (HCMBOK^®).

Parallel to the movements promoted by other associations of experts, the Project Management Institute (PMI) published the Fifth Edition of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) in 2013, bringing as its big news a new area of knowledge little addressed until then among project mana gers: stakeholder management (PMI, 2013a).

A few months later, the PMI confirmed its focus on the human issue by launching Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide (PMI, 2013b), with fundamentals that suggested that organizational change management would be more and more present in PMBOK^® Guide.

It is this growing popularization of human factor management in projects, spread mainly by the Association of Change Management Professionals^® (ACMP^®), PMI, and HUCMI^®, that typifies the third generation of organizational change management. The discipline went from the “what to do” phase to the “how to do it” phase in terms of the universe of project management.

Change management was never seen as important a discipline as it is today. Data from the Pulse of the Profession^®, a 2017 report organized by the PMI, shows that 67% of senior executives consider the creation of a culture receptive to organizational change as very high or somewhat high priority (PMI, 2017).

The project management discipline has evolved significantly over the past three decades, but only recently has it begun to see management of the human factor as an essential area of knowledge that cannot be restricted to organizational change management professionals.

The organizational change management expert will always exist—a professional with extensive experience, knowledge, and skills to address the most complex aspects of the subject. However, the Human Resources (HR) professionals, project, program, and portfolio managers of the future have already realized that they must have a good command of human factor management in order to continuously increase rates of success in achieving the strategic objectives that drive organizations.

After all, there are no projects without people, nor are there organizational changes that should not be structured as projects.

When we speak of a new generation in the technological world, we are almost always speaking of substitute technologies, a new generation of technologies that overlaps the earlier generation, which is then doomed to disappear. When it comes to human issues, however, the dynamic is different. Generations are added and inspire one another, but do not substitute for an earlier generation. Rather they are directed to new audiences, with similar fundamentals but a new approach. In this particular case, third-generation (3G) change management is a translation of the concepts of prior generations for a universe of professionals who demand a more practical and objective language targeting their reality, enhanced by some new knowledge and more connected with the contemporary world of project management.

This is the approach of HCMBOK^®, already used in more than 27 countries. According to this approach, the human factor is an integral part of the strategy for any kind of project. Twenty-five out of HCMBOK^®’s 48 macro-activities are carried out before the execution phase is started, thus fine-tuning from the planning phase how to communicate the project, choose the sponsors who can best influence the success of the venture, and define the purpose that can best connect stakeholders with specific changes and strategies to reduce resistance and expand human engagement.

In its approach, HCMBOK^® organizes a sequence of macro-activity techniques to manage cultural and human behavior issues in a structured way, while providing an arsenal of skills that are essential to project managers—for example, participatory process, conflict, motivation and behavior management, creation of team spirit, empathetic communication, creativity, and innovation.

In short, the HCMBOK^® Guide was developed to facilitate integration into any methodology. It addresses human factor–related issues in the language of project managers and complements the stakeholder management approach developed by the PMI.

So, be prepared. Delivering a project within the planned deadline, cost, quality, and scope is no longer enough. The expectation now is that the strategic objectives that motivated the project are measured by qualitative and quantitative goals, which require engagement of the human component to be achieved.

No matter the title that prevails—Organizational Change Management or Stakeholder Management—it is clear that the third generation of human factor management in projects (3G CM) is here to stay and has become an essential discipline for project managers of the third millennium.

1.2. Is Change So Difficult?

Looking at the anthropological context, the human being was shaped over millennia not to change but to maintain the status quo whenever possible. This was the case when the first hunter-gatherer societies were established. People were nomads, forced to move from one geographic location to another, whenever the hunting or gathering area was depleted or became unworkable for any other reason. This change involved a number of risks: the risk of not finding another area in time that would ensure their survival; and, worst of all, the risk of finding this other area already occupied by another group. Encountering another group would most likely lead to violence and other unpredictable consequences.

Centuries later, people began to practice agriculture and cattle raising, and no longer depended on hunting and gathering to survive. Societies could then settle down without the need for constant geographic moves. The first villages were established, and soon their protection strategies, such as walls and barriers, reduced the need for moving. Over the millennia, these walls became taller and stronger and whenever someone had to go outside that safe zone—to the forests and fields—the sensation of risk and discomfort was present.

Modern society, in the anthropological context, has maintained this instinct of aversion to change given the inherent risk that change represents to the collective unconsciousness. The now psychological “walls” and “barriers” are still alive in every human being. As Charles Darwin stated, “Man still carries in his physical structure the indelible mark of his primitive ancestors.”

Not by chance, Heraclitus of Ephesus realized that “Nothing but change is permanent.” Later, Charles Darwin endorsed this same theory in his study, The Origin of Species, which addresses “natural selection.” Darwin verified that species are constantly changing and that “It is not the strongest of the species nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” In the area of change management in today’s world, no statement is more relevant.

Human behavior varies over time, although it presents stable macro-characteristics. In our view, in the contemporary world the influence of more superficial social relations on the Y generation (also known as millennials) and the Z generation has implications for values and behaviors. The intense and frequent changes promoted by technological revolution are present in the daily lives of young people. This scenario is likely to have effects on the adaptability of these generations, making attachment to the status quo less relevant to their lives. The negative side of these generations’ attitude toward change is their lack of sensitivity to the conservatism of the previous generations. Sometimes they create an impression of disregard, and make more simultaneous changes than the organization can support.

Only time will tell how the deep changes that society is experiencing will influence human behavior. Even so, the challenge of promoting an organizational change continues to be a difficult and complex task, which must be driven through people to achieve a higher rate of success.

1.3. Effects of Change on the Workforce

Human beings change spontaneously when the discomfort of being in a certain situation seems greater than the change. However, some changes can be very difficult for humans to process, and put us in a state of mourni...