Strategic change initiatives tend to consider organizational change management activities as an integral part
of the project. In these initiatives, it is the organization itself and the way workers think about the organization
that are affected. When the purpose of the initiative is changing the firm’s people and their mind-set, the entire
goal is to shift the current mind-set to a future one.
Operational change initiatives, on the other hand, are taken on to change a process or a system. OCM activities
may be easily overlooked when the focus is not on changing the workers themselves, as it is with strategic
change, but on changes within the system in which the workers operate. This SMA focuses on why and how
to include OCM activities when the business is introducing operational change through system implementation
projects. Although it presents the concepts in the context of a system implementation methodology, the
techniques can be applied to other types of operational change initiatives.
In system implementation projects, the traditional project team roles include project manager, business analyst,
programmer, and other subject matter experts.1
The project team works together to ensure the project is
delivered to meet business requirements and that the technical requirements of the solution are met for a
successful implementation. The OCM activities may be pushed aside because the technical responsibilities of
the project team do not allow for enough time to ensure the project is delivered effectively from the human
perspective. Ironically, when unsuccessful operational change projects are assessed, seven out of the top 10
reasons for failure are due to missed organizational change management opportunities.2