A fictitious situation-
A big company buys a smaller company.
Big company lets small company retain name and separateness (in location and operation).
Later, much later, big company decides it is time for, now viewed as little company, to assimilate (and that is a nice way of saying it).
Big company has done lots of functional one off initiatives, but never tied them together, or illuminated one individual one.
So transformational change hat on- this is an excellent opportunity to call out the use of change management, use that leverage to model horizontal work for the organization as a whole and throw in development, mentoring and guiding of potential change leaders at multiple levels.
Just knowing change is being guided and that a framework will be created to do it again draws participants in. Having an external resource as a mediative influence is powerful (I should capitalize that). If the change this horizontal, whole system leverage is tied to is a difficult one (in our case assimilation- all would say that is difficult from both companies) then the illumination first on CM distracts focus to a shared purpose. The difficult initiative can then be languaged as the place to shine the light. It becomes more about exploring change together than tackling THE change.
It is not going to trick anyone true. This is the type of thing though that can be called out for what it is- a way to understand the process of change and therefore make it a little easier to deal with the actual change. And move forward with a better understanding than would have been present with the one off approach.
