It is evident that Benefits Management has the potential to provide a significant boost to the results of Organisational Change initiatives but there is much to suggest that the increased utilisation of Change Management knowledge and practises would increase those gains further.
However, although recognised as a key management discipline, the role and utility of Change Management is often ‘under-estimated’ and ‘under-exploited’ resulting in unnecessary stakeholder uncertainty and frustration which, in itself, can have a significantly adverse impact on change performance and increase the build up of resistive and regressive forces.
Whereas the Benefits Management discipline tends to treat a specific change as a ‘black-box’ up until its deployment is being considered, Change Management manages the overall organisation’s readiness and preparedness for change and seeks to go ‘inside the box’ to analysis and expose the characteristics and nature of the changes to be made e.g. people, systems, process, behaviour, culture, environment etc at the earliest opportunity in the process.
In raising the profile of Change Management, the role that Benefits Management plays in implicating the organisation’s personnel in the identification and design of the required changes should not be ignored. When combined, the practises and rigour of Benefits Management and the learning and experience of the Change Management discipline do much to enable successful and sustainable change.
