Excerpt “HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP”

Implementing Organizational Change Successfully: Five Powerful Strategies to Seduce and Influence Stakeholders, Sell Your Ideas, and Boost Your Career in the Human Resources Department!

HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP_3DImplementing change in your organization is a complex challenge. Research shows that only one third of all initiated projects are successful in meeting this challenge. Among the success factors, the formal project management technique (for example PMBOK, PRINCE2, MSP, Agile, etc.) that is applied only accounts for 6% of the project’s success. The two most important success factors, however, are support from the client and support from the internal users, which together account for 34% of the project’s success. But how can you successfully create this support?

HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP contains five strategies that are very powerful in creating support and buy-in for your change project or initiative. Combined, the strategies will create support by seducing (as in alluring or enticing) stakeholders into the change that you want to realize. Seducing stakeholders means that you influence them to become positive about the change. Creating this positive attitude will significantly increase your chances of a successful project.

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SPOMP Your Project

The letters SPOMP are an abbreviation of the five strategies that are presented in HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP. These five strategies are very powerful in seducing the client, internal users, and other stakeholders. Each strategy is a building block to become even more successful in implementing the organizational or behavioral change that you want to realize.

Five SPOMP strategies to “seduce” stakeholders into change
Five SPOMP strategies to “seduce” stakeholders into change

Select Your Stakeholders (S)

Office politics always plays a major role when you want to realize change in your organization. Politics is often viewed as a negative force on the project, but you can turn it into a positive. To use politics as a positive force, you need to carefully select the stakeholders who can influence others to favor your project. HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP describes how to determine which stakeholders you need to select in order to use office politics to your advantage.

Plan to Communicate (P)

In order to seduce stakeholders into change, you need to communicate on a frequent basis with them. This is essential in order to create multiple opportunities for yourself to positively influence stakeholders in adopting and embracing your change initiative. Frequent communication from the start of the project ensures that stakeholders are not confronted with a change, but that they are “taken along” in the change project. In this way, stakeholders will get accustomed to the idea of change, and this will significantly reduce potential resistance. HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP describes in two clear steps how to efficiently plan frequent communication moments with stakeholders.

Organize Influence (O)

A steering committee, project board, or another governance body can help you to create support and buy-in for the change that you want to realize in your organization. HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP describes how you can utilize such a body to successfully create this support. You will learn how to strategically organize your influence in such a way that the governance body will start working for you.

Market Your Change Initiative (M)

Just as a manufacturer uses marketing to seduce customers into purchasing a product, you can use marketing to seduce stakeholders into change. Therefore, you need to view your change initiative as a product that you want to sell to stakeholders. HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP describes how to sell your initiative by marketing your project, the capabilities of your project team, and yourself as the orchestrator of the change.

Prove Potential Success (P)

The challenge of the fifth and last SPOMP strategy is to prove during the project that your project will be successful in the end. The goal is to create a positive attitude from stakeholders regarding the organizational change that you want to realize. If you can convince stakeholders of this potential success, then it becomes much easier to seduce them into change. HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP describes how to seduce stakeholders by proving the potential success of your project.

The Promise of SPOMP

The five SPOMP strategies are very powerful in seducing stakeholders into change because it shows you who (S), when (P), and how (O, M, and P) to seduce. By SPOMPing your project, you will make the stakeholder’s mind receptive to your ideas, even before implementing them in your organization. This greatly enhances your chances of realizing a successful change.

In addition, SPOMPing a project has many other advantages. An advantage for the client is a shorter project duration because there is less resistance at the time the change is going to be implemented. Furthermore, internal users will benefit from SPOMP because they are able to influence the change process. Moreover, project team members will experience much more motivation to actively participate in the project because SPOMP delegates responsibility to them.

For you, the advantage is that SPOMPing a project will boost your career as an internal consultant. You will be perceived as a successful professional because you are realizing change faster and better than others in your organization. As a result of your successful image, you will be asked to manage ever more interesting and challenging projects. At a certain moment in your career, you can even choose which projects you would like to manage. The mere fact that you accept a project assignment will be considered as a “quality mark” within your organization.

Your successful image ensures that colleagues are keen to participate in the projects that you are managing. It will also create trust amongst stakeholders which makes managing future projects increasingly easy. I know this from my own experience and from the internal professionals whom I have coached over the years. It works in the same way as a football coach who has a successful track record and thus a successful image. This football coach also has no need to explain why he or she opts for a certain line-up.

Discover for yourself how you can SPOMP your project and successfully seduce stakeholders into the organizational change you want to realize. Find out in everyday practice what SPOMP can do for you and how it will boost your career!

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