Introduction

In our last blog, Tracking Expectation Alignment to Avoid IT Project Failure, Nick discussed the impact misalignment can have on project success.  During many consulting engagements, we identified that organizational misalignment is a major factor in organizations and individuals failing to achieve goals.

This changed our focus to align people’s expectations first, before designing, learning, coaching etc. Consequently, this approach has helped clients add millions to the bottom line, bring projects in on time, and successfully enable value added technology insertion.

In this blog we want to build on that theme.   Many change projects were planned in response to the economy, yet almost half of the respondents to our and many other surveys indicate that a significant number of change projects failed to meet their stated goals.

We have learned that anticipating and managing misalignment goes to the root of building successful change. And so the theme of this blog, Managing Alignment Challenges -- so that you can increase the odds that the change you’re planning will achieve its desired results.

Today, we want to focus on people alignment.  We recognize there are other important components of successful change, including alignment of resources with strategy.  It’s a big subject. But one thing is for sure – Change has to be personal before it can be organizational.