Prof Double R

 

When responding to Justin and Garvin posts, consider the following:

• How are the change management examples shared by your peers similar or different from your own?
• Are there any additional change management skills you would recommend to your peers based on their examples? Support your response by referencing relevant topics from the course.

Justin Post

 

One change initiative I was heavily involved in was a large ERP transformation (SAP S/4HANA) where I led data workstreams across multiple business functions. A big issue we ran into was inconsistent communication, where different teams had different understandings of timelines, data ownership, and expectations, which caused confusion and slowed progress. Looking back, I would have approached this differently by being more intentional about how communication was structured. From what we learned in Organizational Change: Creating Change Through Strategic Communications by Laurie Lewis, communication is really about creating shared meaning, not just pushing out information. I relied a lot on meetings and documentation, but I didn’t always consider how messages were landing with different groups. A more targeted communication approach, along with clearer stakeholder alignment early on, would have likely reduced friction and improved engagement.

One of the biggest takeaways for me from this course is how much leadership behavior impacts employee engagement during change. Concepts from The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner really reinforced that leaders need to consistently model and reinforce change, not just announce it. I’ve seen firsthand that when leadership messaging is clear and consistent, teams are much more willing to adapt. Going forward, I plan to be more proactive in aligning leaders around key messages and building in feedback loops, like quick check-ins or workshops, to understand how change is actually being received. Overall, this course helped shift my mindset from just managing tasks during change to really focusing on how people experience it.

Garvin Post

 

In a previous role, I took on responsibility for managing our business unit’s capital project budget. At the time, there wasn’t a clear process to track project status or understand whether projects were over or under budget, which created a lack of visibility for both project teams and leadership.

To address this, I introduced monthly review meetings with project managers and created a standardized, plug-and-play slide deck for updates. This gave each project owner a simple way to share status, highlight risks, and discuss mitigation plans. I also rolled this up into a monthly leadership review, which helped provide a clear, consolidated view of overall budget performance. As a result, we significantly improved transparency, alignment, and proactive decision-making.

Looking back, this approach aligned well with key change management principles like communication and stakeholder engagement. The recurring meetings created consistent messaging, and involving project managers directly helped build accountability and buy-in. That said, I think I could have strengthened the approach by more intentionally applying a formal framework like Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model or the ADKAR Model. While I was doing many of the right things, I didn’t formally focus on areas like building urgency or reinforcing the change long-term.

The biggest takeaway for me from this course is how critical communication, stakeholder involvement, and reinforcement are to making change stick. Going forward, I’d be more intentional about using a structured framework, defining success metrics upfront, and building in reinforcement mechanisms to ensure the change is sustained over time.

Overall, this experience showed me that successful change isn’t just about creating a process, but about making sure people understand it, adopt it, and continue using it.