The most important products, services, and tools of successful change management professionals.

As change management professionals, it’s vital for us to know not only the history of the industry, but also the emerging trends and factors driving change within our world. In addition to this, we must be masters of our domain.

Here, we’ve broken down the products, services, tools, and roles that are an essential part of the change management professional’s career.

Products & Services

The goal of change management is to engage and transition all people impacted by change, from C-suite executives to front line to customers. To achieve these outcomes, change managers use some or all of the following products and services:

  • Leadership Coaching
  • Implementation Strategy & Planning
  • Impact Assessments
  • Future State Design
  • Training/Learning
  • Project/Program Management
  • Communications
  • Employee Engagement
  • Coaching & Facilitation
  • Organizational Design & Development

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Tools

Within any of the products and services, change management professionals bring with them a set of tools—some standard with the profession; some customized by an individual or a firm. They use the tools to help identify and quantify change impacts, communicate to impacted individuals and groups, and provide these individuals and groups with the training needed to successfully transition to the new way of doing business.

As a result of the shift to technology, many of the tools in use, particularly those used for assessment and feedback are moving online. Some of these tool groups include: change-management-workspace-2

The People

Today, the largest number of change management professionals are employees of organizations, either formally charged with change management responsibility or performing change-management-related activities.

They represent many different functions: As the importance of change management practices continue to attract more positive attention to their impact on project success, many organizations are building internal change management consulting capabilities in their HR, Technology, or Program Management offices.

change-management-workspace (1)

This trend is providing more job opportunities for organizational effectiveness, performance consulting, and change management professionals. Although the consulting industry is in large part responsible for initiating change management, today a much smaller number of change management professionals are part of the consulting industry.  These change management consultants fall into four categories:

  1. “The Big Four”
  2. Large consulting firms
  3. Boutique change management consulting firms
  4. Individual practitioners/consultants, both internal and external

The future shows signs of allied professions joining the ranks of change management service providers, for example, public relations professionals addressing internal employee change communications and project management professionals providing a full service implementation capability.

How do you see the landscape changing as a change management professional? Let us know in the comments below, or join the conversation on the Change Management Review’s Facebook page.