The greatest hurdle to IT project success sometimes comes in the form of the people who are affected by the project, and the reason often boils down to an innate aversion to change. Transformation is necessary to business, however, and to implement a successful change program leaders need to ask five basic questions, advise Scott Keller and Colin Price, authors of Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage.

Companies that are overly preoccupied with short-term financial performance generally need transformation, but they tend to develop change programs that are myopic as well, Keller and Price write in a post at Harvard Business Review. Successful change requires organizations to examine not only financial performance but organizational health when considering the five basic issues underlying the change program. With this approach, improvements occur not only in the short-term, but they also set the stage for ongoing, successful change.

The first question to consider is where do you want to go with the intended change? To answer this with both financial performance and organizational health in mind, you have to look to "the intersection of where market opportunities exist, what capabilities your company has, and where you and your employees are passionate about making a difference," write the authors. 

Next, you need to ask yourself whether the organization is really ready for the planned change. Moving directly from "aspiration to action" can lead to failure, they warn. You have to make sure there is a good understanding of what kinds of capabilities and outlooks have to be implemented to ensure change takes place. Then you have to examine what steps must be taken at the practical level, including terminating projects that aren't improving performance and organizational health.

A fourth area of questions centers on how the transformational change will be managed. How much energy is required? What kind of communications are necessary? How will employees feel ownership in the changes? And how do you evaluate progress?

Finally, what do you do to ensure continuous improvement while sustaining the impact you have already achieved? "Avoiding this trap involves re-purposing some of your transformation infrastructure to have an ongoing role in facilitating knowledge sharing and learning methods, and providing expertise to help the company continue to improve," the authors recommend.

For more:
- see Keller and Price's post at Harvard Business Review

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