A Change Practitioner will need to steer, guide, lead and prod for a variety of situations. While human nature can be consistent cultures and processes within organizations are distinct. Which of course is the result of human nature. Intuition, experience and empathy may carry the day for knowing people in general, but to get to the specifics and the “distinct” of one organizations takes an initial list of questions and to-do’s.
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How do they communicate
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What are the horizontal connections (if any)
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Where is leverage the strongest
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How weak or strong is the PMO
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What is the history of change
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What is the understanding of change management
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At the individual level what are the disconnects in the organization
Turning these bullets into actual questions to individual stakeholders will create a list of helpful and not so helpful in terms of the way the organization exchanges, moves and learns. In fact the last bullet usually reveals the first (but feels too much like a resistance/negative approach to be a start for new conversations). What you hope for as a leader/change agent are clean lines of communication horizontally, vertically and circular; enough breakage of a silo structure that the change work can cross functions; leverage in the right spots as catalysts rather than roadblocks; an effective, aware and capable PMO; as little bad baggage as possible and understanding/willingness on the part of the stakeholders.
You can see how the short list gets long fast and now have some more data on why most organizations need Change Management.