Most seasoned executives will agree that implementing a strategy can be a lot more complex and challenging than the formulation of the strategy. If you read articles on strategy implementation you will find a myriad of factors to keep focused on including resourcing, prioritisation, tracking, program management, etc.
However, the one discipline that is under-leveraged in strategy execution is change management. You may ask why? A lot of change managers are hired to focus on one specific projects, whether it be rolling out a new system or introducing a new product. Many understand the skill set of change managers as focusing on developing communication and training plans.
When we look deeper into what is needed to successfully implement a strategy and the work approach of a change manager, you will see that there is significant synergy. Change management is also concerned with planning and managing not just one but a multiple of changes. In fact, best practice companies use a portfolio approach to manage a suite of changes.
Here are some of the ways in which change management naturally complements strategy implementation:
Change vision
One of the most critical parts of implementing a strategy is how we bring stakeholders along the journey. Typically, senior managers will ‘dream up’ the strategy in a closed room, and then try to roll this out to the rest of the organization. Alternatively, a consulting firm may be hired to design a strategy that may stay on the shelf and never becomes implemented.
The change manager’s approach is to design the strategy formulation process by bringing concerned stakeholder groups together to build consensus and buy-in. The classic change commitment curve shows that the more you involve someone throughout the process, the more they will develop a sense of ownership and feel that it is in their interest to make the change successful.
A typical change management approach would also encompass clarifying the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the strategy in a way that makes sense to the audience. Is the end state clear? What is the role of each stakeholder in making this a success? How do we position the end state so that it arouses the ‘head’ as well as the ‘heart’ so that people can connect to it? Connecting to people emotionally is key to engagement.
Understanding the impacts of the change
A strategy usually involves a set of initiatives or changes that the business would like to focus on to achieve their goals. A lot of organizations jump straight into planning and implementing the various initiatives before understanding what the total impact is on the various parts of the business, and the impacts on the customer.
Having an integrated view of what the impacts will mean to each part of the organization is key. This integrated picture can be leveraged to provide a clear, cohesive and integrated set of messages and expectations to that part of the organization that will guide their change process. And depending on the change, what the Marketing department will focus on may be completely different compared to the Human Resource department. Having an integrated picture means that we are able to help employee join the dots around what the strategy and the various initiatives mean to them, versus just a set of independent projects. In this way, creating meaning for the overall change helps with engagement.
The change manager’s approach would be to focus on mapping on the various impacts on stakeholder groups, including the customer. The impacts would consist of people and organization impacts, process impacts, and technology impacts. In this way, we are able to understand and architect what changes we are making across the board before we begin the journey. This will also ensure effective sequencing, prioritization and alignment before jumping into initiative delivery.
Capabilities required to support the strategy
A typical change approach would involve looking at the capabilities required to support the strategy. A big part of change management work is analysing the requirements of implementing the change (in this case a set of initiatives to support the strategy), and formulating key capabilities required. Capabilities may be developed using a range of approaches, including hiring functional specialists, conducting learning sessions, or coaching. The Change Manager will formulate learning needs analysis, and then formulate appropriate learning interventions. For significant capability development programs, competencies frameworks may need to be set up.
Capabilities may need to be acquired rather than developed. In this case the change manager would look at how to ensure that the talent acquired can fit in smoothly in the current culture of the organization. Team development sessions may need to be conducted. This includes whether the capability is acquired through acquisition, or key talents were hired into the organization.
Engagement and communication
Ineffective engagement and communication can make or break a strategy. A significant portion of strategy implementation needs to be spent on engagement with every layer of the stakeholder impacted. Change impacts conducted will help to inform what kind of engagement is required with what stakeholder group. This includes the severity of the impact, the duration of the impact, why the stakeholders may be concerned, and how critical they are to the success of the strategy, etc.
The change manager will then design the right governance processes to ensure that key stakeholders are in the loop and embedded within the decision-making process. In addition to this, the change manager will craft a communications plan to target various stakeholder groups, with targeted messages, and using a mix of communication channels to get the message across. An effective communication approach would also include designing the right feedback mechanisms to ensure employee feedback is proactively incorporated.
Measurement
A key success criterion for implementing a strategy is measuring the progress of implementation to understand where the organization is at. It is common for change managers to devise change readiness assessments to measure and test where each part of the business is at. These assessments are conducted throughout the implementation period to understand any changes in readiness and track overall progress. The assessment can in the form of interviews, surveys or ratings by selected stakeholders. Other measurements include training attendance, competency attainment, and communication effectiveness of various channels utilised.
The most important part of charting the implementation of the strategy is measuring the impact of the change. Best practice calls for detailed capturing of change impacts on each part of the organization in a visual way to aid understanding. This includes heatmaps and reports on what the implementation roadmap will mean to the business. The change impact based heatmaps are critical to allow effective planning to balance the need to drive the strategy forward, and balance the business-as-usual activities so that the business is still able to perform.
Effective reporting should call out resourcing impacts, whether there is too much going on from a rollout perspective, potential re-sequencing opportunities, and the overall pace of change within the implementation roadmap. The data should enable effective conversations in terms of how effective the planned roadmap is in reaching strategy objectives and whether the right pace and velocity of change are being planned.
Change leadership
Last but not least driving an effective strategy requires effective leadership skills. The work of the change manager involves assessing existing leadership qualities, including understanding any gaps and challenges. These may be addressed by capability programs.
The change manager also normally takes in working with the sponsor of the change, in this case it could be a member of the c-suite on his or her change leadership skills. Some examples of effective skills include the ability to articulate the end state in a way that the audience can relate to and be enthusiastic about, ability t listen and empathise with employee groups, ability to identify and resolve any change obstacles, the ability sense check and pivot as needed (agility), and the ability to delegate and hold others accountable for achieving prescribed targets.
– Analyse change impacts to the whole system: people, process, technology.
– Map out the impacts of current and planned strategies to better sequence and plan the change
– Look at the capabilities required in the business
– Engagement and communications, involving key players in developing the strategy
– Measurement – business readiness and indicator tracking
– Change leadership is driving traction and behaviour change
– A strategy contains a set of initiatives – the key is to formulate a picture of what will be changing and be able to sequence and prioritise things to design the roadmap effectively
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A lot of organizations think of change management as something that can be outsourced to change managers or project managers. In this view, a piece of change can be managed as a project so that the rest of the business can focus on its business-as-usual activities.
What a lot of organizations do not realize is that managing change is an ethical obligation. How a company manages change can fundamentally impact its human rights record and its adherence to ethical practice standards. This includes the impact of its decisions or the way it engages with its employees, partners, suppliers, and customers.
This is especially important for a lot of financial services firms that have been under close scrutiny by regulators for ethical business conduct. In Australia, the banking royal commission has been focused closely on the ethical practices of banks and insurers. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) which is the law enforcement body, has been investigating unethical practices of various financial services organizations. This commission has unleashed a deluge of fresh complaints and admissions about misconduct in the finance sector. Most of these are centered around impacts on customers.
Ethics and change
Let’s explore more about ethical practices during change. Let’s take one example – Ethical practices during re-structuring. A typical process goes like this. The senior managers meet to discuss and come up with the organizational structure changes required. Sometimes, a few of the middle managers may provide some input into this process. However, overall the process is kept secret to ensure that none of the details are disclosed to employees. The Human Resources function will be involved throughout the process.
Eventually, when all the details are finished and finalized, the organization would typically conduct a town hall, a call, or a meeting to go through these changes with employees. A short 2-3 week period will usually be given as a ‘consultation period’ to obtain employee feedback. However, in most cases, these changes are already a done deal irrespective of employee feedback.
In this very common case facing nearly all organizations, the employee as a stakeholder group is designed to be disadvantaged in that it lacks the power of information and it lacks the power over the ability to actually participate in decision making. It is also no surprise that most employees in this situation will experience stress and anxiety. Some will even choose to leave. Others may have their roles made redundant.
Yes – in this scenario, the organization needs to take into account a broad range of considerations including what is good for the shareholders of the company, what is good for the business, and what is good for customers. However, organizations often overlook the fact that both employees and customers are stakeholder groups that need to be consulted when there is a significant change being planned.
Involving these stakeholder groups makes sense from a change management perspective because this engagement enhances buy-in and ownership in terms of what is changing. It also makes sense in terms of the organization’s ethical obligation to involve stakeholder groups so that the process does not negatively disadvantage them.
This does not mean giving away the decision-making accountability. However, it does mean a more inclusive decision-making process that is collaborative and achieves better engagement and understanding, and therefore a more ethical approach.
Organizational standards
Many organizations have called out ethical principles in leading change. In a document titled “Achieving structural change” 2007 the Queensland state government of Australia defined social inclusion as an approach that is inclusive so that people do not feel ‘shut out’. Social inclusion is “people wanting to participate as valued, appreciated equals in the social, economic, political and cultural life of the community”.
The Coca-cola European Headquarters very recently published a ‘Human Rights Restructuring Guidelines’ in June 2018. Under ‘Structural changes and mitigation of adverse effects on employees’ some of the points include:
“As early as possible, initiate a process of identifying the potential impact of business restructuring activity on employees, including human rights impacts”
“In general, we should be committed to using available means, as appropriate, to ensure meaningful cooperation with employees …..in order to mitigate adverse effects of restructuring decisions on employees”
So far we have been using the example of organizational restructuring. However, the same ethical principle of social inclusion and engagement also applies to other changes that may have less quantum of impact. Change initiatives include anything from implementing a new technology system, changing a process, introducing a new product, changing a customer policy, or a new marketing campaign.
We need to apply the same ethical principle to any of these changes. Change Managers will already call out that these are basic change principles they already use. For many organizations, this may be a wake-up call that identifying the change impacts and engaging with those impacted is not a nice to have, but an ethical obligation for any ethical organization.
Multiple changes
Most organizations are not experiencing just one change initiative, but a series of changes that overlap one another. The obligation and challenge for larger organizations are how to assess the change impacts on employees and customers across the board, versus initiative by initiative. From this view and understanding of the collective impacts, the organization can then form a better plan on how to effectively engage, involve, and inform the impacted employee and customer groups. Using an online tool to form a visual of the impacts of multiple changes on these stakeholder groups is a great way to use data to plan effectively. The Change Compass is one example.
To conclude, organizations need to think hard about their ethical practices, not just those impacts on the customers but also on employees. When we think of human rights and social inclusion we usually think of disadvantaged groups such as minorities. However, the principles are just as applicable in a change context. How do we ensure that organizations are accountable for their ethical practices toward employees? Many forward-thinking organizations are already starting to take note and have committed to formal standards and practices to adhere to.
Ray and Charles Eames, legendary mid-century designers, developed creative processes remarkably aligned with modern agile methodologies. Their approach emphasised iteration, resource respect, and systems thinking, offering valuable lessons for today’s project teams facing complex delivery challenges.
This guide explores five key Eames principles and their direct application to agile project delivery. Change practitioners and project leaders gain practical insights to enhance iteration, stakeholder engagement, and systemic success.
What Agile Principles Did Eames Champion?
The Eames duo’s design philosophy prefigured agile concepts by decades. Their methods focused on practical experimentation, collective wisdom, and holistic systems. These are core tenets of contemporary agile delivery.
These principles translate directly to project environments, improving outcomes across technology rollouts, process changes, and organisational transformations.
1. Not Reinventing the Wheel: Leverage Collective Experience
Eames avoided starting from scratch, instead building on proven materials and techniques. Agile teams benefit similarly by tapping organisational knowledge rather than isolated innovation.
Practical Applications in Agile Delivery
Previous rollout lessons: Review past implementations of similar products or services to anticipate adoption challenges and success factors.
Stakeholder group insights: Consult colleagues experienced with specific audience dynamics and communication preferences.
Solution design patterns: Adapt approaches proven effective in prior technical or process solutions.
Timeline strategies: Apply scheduling techniques refined through previous deadline pressures.
Learning intervention successes: Reuse effective training content, delivery methods, and evaluation frameworks.
This principle prevents redundant effort while accelerating delivery through proven foundations.
2. Continuous Testing and Learning: Iterative Refinement
The Eames process featured constant prototyping and feedback, mirroring agile’s iterative cycles. Every team member, not just designers, contributes to this learning loop.
Change Management Testing Examples
Message validation: A/B test communications with target audiences to measure resonance and engagement.
Learning content trials: Pilot training modules with sample groups, gathering feedback on structure, clarity, and delivery medium.
Impact assessment accuracy: Validate change impact analysis directly with end users rather than proxies alone.
3. Respecting the Materials at Hand: Understand Your Resources
Eames emphasised the importance of recognising the capabilities and limitations of available resources. In agile project delivery, this means deeply understanding people, systems, processes, and stakeholder capacities.
Applying Resource Respect in Agile Projects
Assess team skills and system maturity before designing interventions.
Adapt project plans based on stakeholder readiness and local constraints.
Support change leads in gauging the ability levels of different groups to absorb new processes.
Tailor communication and training to maximise relevance and effectiveness given resource realities.
This approach builds realistic, sustainable change strategies aligned with organisational strengths and challenges.
4. Generating New Perspectives and Ideas Through Play and Fun
The Eames valued play as a creative catalyst, fostering new ideas and fresh perspectives. Agile teams benefit from incorporating elements of play, fun, and experimentation into their work.
Practical Ways to Embed Play in Agile Delivery
Run hackathons or innovation sprints encouraging out-of-the-box thinking.
Design team-building activities that mix fun with purposeful reflection on project goals.
Use gamification techniques to increase engagement in learning and adoption tasks.
Foster a psychologically safe environment where experimentation and mistakes are accepted as learning opportunities.
Play enhances creativity, collaboration, and morale, supporting higher-quality outcomes.
5. Eventually Everything Connects: Embrace Systems Thinking
The Eames stressed seeing the broader picture and understanding how various elements interlink to form a larger system. This mindset is vital in agile delivery, where dependencies and impacts extend beyond single teams or projects.
Systems Thinking in Agile Projects
Map connections among processes, systems, communications, training, and branding to ensure cohesive delivery.
Identify how multiple change initiatives intersect and impact shared stakeholders or resources.
Help stakeholders understand how different initiatives support broader organisational strategies.
Use system maps and visualisations to support planning, risk assessment, and communication.
This holistic awareness prevents siloed work and promotes integrated, effective change.
Implementation Roadmap for Eames-Inspired Agile Delivery
Applying These Principles in Modern Projects
Quick-Start Actions for Teams
Conduct knowledge audits to capture previous rollout experiences across the organisation.
Schedule regular testing cycles for communications, training, and impact assessments.
Map resource capabilities and limitations during project kickoff planning.
Plan quarterly innovation sessions incorporating play and experimentation elements.
Create visual system maps showing project interconnections and dependencies.
Building Organisational Support
Train change leads in resource assessment and systems thinking techniques.
Establish cross-project knowledge sharing forums.
Integrate Eames principles into agile training and certification programs.
Use success stories to demonstrate ROI from iterative testing and collective learning.
These steps embed timeless design wisdom into contemporary delivery practices.
Cultural Considerations for Success
Overcoming Common Barriers
Success requires psychological safety for experimentation and leadership support for non-traditional approaches. Traditional organisations may resist play-based innovation, requiring champions to demonstrate tangible benefits first.
Scaling Across Teams
Start with pilot projects showcasing measurable improvements in delivery speed, stakeholder satisfaction, and adoption rates. Use these case studies to expand practice organisation-wide.
Measuring Impact
Track metrics like iteration cycle time reduction, stakeholder engagement scores, knowledge reuse rates, and cross-project collaboration frequency to validate principle effectiveness.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What makes Eames principles relevant to modern agile delivery? Their focus on iteration, collective wisdom, resource respect, creativity through play, and systems thinking directly addresses contemporary project complexity and delivery challenges.
How do you implement continuous testing in change management? Use A/B testing for messages, pilot training modules with user groups, and validate impact assessments directly with end users to refine approaches iteratively.
Why is systems thinking essential in agile projects? Modern initiatives rarely operate in isolation. Understanding interconnections prevents siloed work and ensures cohesive delivery across multiple changes.
How can teams incorporate play into serious projects? Run hackathons, gamify learning tasks, and design team activities blending fun with purposeful project reflection to boost creativity and morale.
What is the first step in applying ‘not reinventing the wheel’? Conduct knowledge audits capturing previous rollout lessons, stakeholder insights, and proven solution patterns across the organisation.
In 1977, Ray and Charles Eames, celebrated for their iconic mid-century furniture, embarked on a cosmic journey. Their creation, “The Powers of Ten,” takes viewers from an ordinary picnic on Earth to the edges of the observable universe, showcasing the vastness and intricacy of our cosmos. Beyond its cinematic wonder, this film offers profound insights into change management – a journey of continuity and transformation. Let’s embark on a parallel voyage, learning valuable lessons from the Eames masterpiece. The link to the famous 9-minute video can be found here.
The Power of Change Management Components
Change management, much like the universe depicted in “The Powers of Ten,” encompasses a multitude of components. Let’s explore these components and understand how they relate to effective change management.
Continuity and Change
In “The Powers of Ten,” we witness the dynamic interplay of continuity and change. Just as our universe maintains its constants while evolving, organizations must strike a balance between what remains unaltered and what must adapt. This balance is essential for effective change management. Identify the periods when your frontline staff are pivotal, align your change strategies with these busy phases, and ensure that new initiatives consider these high-activity periods.
Understanding Cultural Context
In “The Powers of Ten,” every frame reveals shifting perspectives. Similarly, when communicating change, acknowledge the diverse lenses through which employees view your messages. Understand their cultural contexts and adapt your approach. One-size-fits-all communication often falls short. Tailor your messages to resonate with various audiences, fostering greater acceptance and engagement.
Cross Collaboration through Context
Change flourishes when change drivers collaborate effectively with change receivers. Drivers must provide vision, intent, resources, and leadership, while receivers offer feedback, support, and behavioral adjustments. Successful collaboration relies on a deep understanding of each other’s contexts. Learn why changes are necessary, how to implement them, and what they require. Acknowledge the cultural context of those impacted by the changes, a crucial aspect often overlooked.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Statistics reinforce the importance of change management. According to a study by Prosci, organizations using a structured approach to change management are 78% more likely to meet or exceed their project objectives. This statistic underscores the need for a strategic, data-driven approach in change management. Make informed decisions, assess the impact of change initiatives, and use data to guide your strategy.
Stakeholder Engagement and Communication
Effective change management relies on robust stakeholder engagement and clear communication. Just as “The Powers of Ten” engages viewers with its visuals and narration, your change initiatives should engage stakeholders through well-crafted communication strategies. Ensure all stakeholders are informed, involved, and heard throughout the change process.
Leadership and Vision
In the Eames film, the journey from picnicking on Earth to exploring the cosmos required a guiding vision. Similarly, successful change management necessitates strong leadership and a clear vision for the future. Leaders must inspire, provide direction, and motivate teams to embrace change.
“The Powers of Ten” is more than a cinematic masterpiece; it’s a guide to navigating change within your organization. Embrace continuity while ushering in change, acknowledging the diverse cultural contexts of your employees. Facilitate collaboration through shared understanding, and maintain a sense of curiosity as you traverse the ever-evolving landscape of change management.
Take your first step into change management’s cosmic universe. Book a weekly demo with us to learn how to navigate the challenges and opportunities effectively.
Most organisations running more than three simultaneous change initiatives are not managing change, they are managing collisions. A new enterprise resource planning system lands at the same time as a workforce restructure and a cultural transformation programme. Each stream has its own change manager, its own communications plan, and its own timeline, and none of them knows what the others are asking of the same group of frontline employees. The result is not failed change, exactly. It is change that technically “lands” by project metrics while producing confusion, fatigue, and quiet resistance in the people it was meant to shift.
This problem is more common than most organisations admit. Prosci’s research on change saturation consistently identifies the volume and pace of simultaneous change as one of the top obstacles to successful adoption, yet the dominant response remains treating each initiative as its own contained project. Change practitioners are asked to be excellent within their lane while the organisation fails to manage the road. Individual programme excellence is necessary, but not sufficient. What is missing is a portfolio-level discipline for landing multiple changes simultaneously.
This article draws on frameworks developed for the ACMP (Association of Change Management Professionals) conference and unpacks what it actually takes to land multiple change initiatives well. The answer is not simply more resources or better project management. It requires a systems thinking approach, a clear-eyed view of cumulative employee load, deliberate sequencing decisions, and governance structures that can make cross-programme calls in real time.
Why landing multiple changes requires a different approach
The traditional change management model is built around a single initiative. You assess the impact, identify the stakeholders, design the engagement plan, and manage resistance along the journey from current state to future state. That model is coherent and well-supported by decades of research and practice. It is also structurally blind to what happens when five versions of it are running simultaneously across the same organisation.
The problem is not that individual change managers are doing their work poorly. It is that the unit of analysis is wrong. When multiple programmes compete for the same leadership attention, the same communication channels, and the same employee bandwidth, the interactions between those programmes become more consequential than the design of any single one. A well-crafted communications plan for Programme A becomes noise when Programme B sends three emails to the same audience on the same day. A training schedule for Programme C creates conflict when Programme D pulls team leaders into workshops during the same fortnight.
McKinsey research on organisational change has repeatedly found that one of the most significant barriers to successful transformation is the failure to coordinate across parallel workstreams. Organisations that treat each initiative as an isolated effort consistently underestimate the cumulative demands placed on the same pools of people. The fix is not project management discipline within each stream. It is a deliberate shift in perspective to the portfolio level, where the interactions between initiatives can be seen and managed.
A systems thinking lens for change portfolio management
Systems thinking offers a more honest way to look at a change portfolio. Rather than treating each initiative as a bounded input-output process, systems thinking asks: what are the interdependencies, feedback loops, and unintended consequences that emerge from the whole? Applied to change management, it means asking not just “will this programme land?” but “what does the system look like when all programmes are running simultaneously, and where are the points of overload or conflict?”
The practical starting point is mapping the portfolio as a system rather than a list. This means identifying which employee groups are touched by each initiative, at what intensity, and over what time period. It means tracing which senior leaders are sponsors of multiple programmes and therefore have divided attention. It means understanding which communication channels are shared across initiatives, and how often those channels are already saturated. This kind of mapping is not an abstract exercise. It surfaces the concrete conflicts that will derail adoption before they happen, rather than after.
A systems lens also changes how you think about success. In a single-programme model, success means the programme achieves its stated outcomes. In a portfolio model, success means the organisation moves forward across all initiatives without destroying the human capacity it needs to sustain them. Gartner’s research on organisational change fatigue found that employees who experience high volumes of change are significantly more likely to report intention to leave, reduced discretionary effort, and lower wellbeing, all of which undermine the very outcomes the change programmes are trying to achieve. Managing the system means managing those risks, not just the project plans.
Understanding cumulative change load on employee groups
The concept of cumulative change load is central to landing multiple initiatives well. Change load refers to the total volume, complexity, and pace of change being asked of a particular employee group at a given point in time. It is not the same as the number of initiatives running in the organisation. It is specific to the experience of a defined group of people, and it varies enormously depending on which programmes touch that group and how intensively.
Frontline team leaders are almost always the most overloaded group in a change portfolio, and they are also the most critical to adoption success. They are typically the key conduit through which every initiative reaches employees on the ground. They attend programme briefings, model new behaviours, coach their teams through transitions, and handle the questions and resistance that employees bring to them. When three programmes ask this of them simultaneously, the cumulative load does not add up linearly. It compounds. Attention splits. Credibility with their teams is at risk if they cannot answer questions about changes they have only partially understood themselves.
Mapping change load by employee group requires moving beyond the programme-level view to an employee-centric view. For each group, you need to understand the total number of active changes affecting them, the degree to which those changes require active behavioural shift versus passive awareness, the timing of key milestones across all programmes, and the existing workload context. This is not a one-time assessment. Change load is dynamic. It shifts as programmes progress, as timelines slip, and as new initiatives are added to the portfolio. Practitioners who treat it as a snapshot rather than a live measure will always be working with outdated information.
Sequencing and timing: the critical decisions
Once you have a clear view of cumulative change load across employee groups, sequencing becomes a strategic tool rather than a scheduling exercise. The question is not just “when can we start?” but “when is this group ready to absorb this change, given everything else they are navigating?” These are different questions, and they lead to different decisions.
Sequencing decisions at the portfolio level typically involve trade-offs that no single programme team is positioned to make. Delaying the go-live of one initiative by six weeks might significantly reduce the load on a critical employee group during a peak period for another programme. But that decision has cost and timeline implications that affect the business case for the delayed programme. Making that call requires a view across the portfolio and authority to act on it. In most organisations, that view and that authority sit in different places, which is why sequencing decisions rarely get made proactively. They get made retrospectively, when something breaks.
Timing also matters at the level of change saturation within the annual cycle. Most organisations have predictable patterns of peak operational demand, whether driven by financial year cycles, product launches, regulatory reporting periods, or seasonal factors. Layering major change activity on top of those peaks is a common and avoidable mistake. A portfolio-level view that maps change milestones against operational calendars gives leaders the information they need to avoid the most predictable collisions. Harvard Business Review has noted that organisations which deliberately pace change, rather than accelerating every initiative simultaneously, achieve significantly better adoption outcomes even if individual programmes take longer to complete.
Building cross-programme stakeholder coordination
Stakeholder management in a portfolio context is categorically different from stakeholder management within a single programme. The same senior leaders appear as sponsors, champions, or key influencers across multiple initiatives. The same middle managers are being asked to role-model change, communicate updates, and embed new processes across several programmes at once. And the same employees are receiving messages from multiple directions about what they need to do differently and why.
Effective cross-programme stakeholder coordination requires a deliberate effort to understand the total demands being placed on shared stakeholders. This means change teams across programmes regularly sharing their stakeholder engagement plans, identifying where they are drawing on the same people, and making collective decisions about how to sequence and rationalise those demands. It sounds straightforward, but in practice it requires a level of transparency and collaboration between programme teams that organisational siloes make difficult.
One practical mechanism is a shared stakeholder engagement calendar that all programme change managers can view and contribute to. This does not eliminate competition for attention, but it makes the competition visible. When a senior leader’s assistant can see that five programmes have each independently scheduled a 90-minute engagement session with their principal in the same month, they can flag the problem. Without that visibility, each session gets booked as if it were the only one. The calendar is a simple tool, but its value is in the shared picture it creates, not the scheduling function it performs.
Cross-programme communication coordination is equally important. Employees receiving multiple streams of change communication need a coherent narrative, not a collection of disconnected announcements. Where possible, programme teams should agree on a shared change story that contextualises each initiative within the broader direction the organisation is moving. This does not mean homogenising all messaging. It means ensuring that when employees ask “why are we doing all of this at once?”, there is a credible answer that connects the dots rather than leaving them to construct their own, often pessimistic, interpretation.
Governance structures that enable portfolio decisions
All of the practices described above, whether mapping change load, making sequencing decisions, or coordinating stakeholder engagement, require a governance structure that can see across the portfolio and act on what it sees. Most organisations do not have this. They have programme steering committees, each of which has a mandate to deliver its own initiative as efficiently as possible. Those committees have no structural incentive to delay or modify their programme for the benefit of another. And so, even when individual programme leaders recognise that the portfolio is overloaded, the governance architecture makes it nearly impossible to do anything about it.
A portfolio change governance function, whether a formal Change Advisory Board or a lighter-touch change portfolio forum, provides the cross-programme view and the decision-making authority to manage the portfolio as a whole. Its mandate is explicitly different from any individual programme’s steering committee. It is not accountable for the delivery of a single initiative. It is accountable for the organisation’s capacity to absorb change across all initiatives, and for protecting the human and leadership resources that every programme depends on.
The critical design question is not what to call this forum, but what authority it has and who sits in it. A portfolio change governance body without authority to delay, re-sequence, or scale back individual programmes is merely a reporting mechanism. It can describe the problem but cannot fix it. Effective portfolio governance requires executives who have accountability across the change portfolio, not just within their own business unit’s initiatives. Prosci’s best practices research consistently finds that active and visible executive sponsorship is the single greatest contributor to change success, and in a portfolio context, that sponsorship must extend to the portfolio level, not just the programme level.
How The Change Compass supports practitioners managing multiple initiatives
Practitioners who are trying to build a portfolio-level view of change often find that the data they need is scattered across multiple project plans, spreadsheets, and stakeholder maps, each maintained by a different programme team and formatted differently. Aggregating that information manually is time-consuming and almost always out of date by the time it is compiled. The Change Compass is a digital platform built specifically to solve this problem. It enables change practitioners to map the change portfolio across employee groups in real time, visualise cumulative change load, and identify the timing conflicts and saturation risks that individual programme views cannot reveal. Rather than replacing the judgement of experienced practitioners, it gives them the information infrastructure to exercise that judgement at the right level. For organisations managing complex, multi-initiative portfolios, having a shared, live view of the change landscape is not a nice-to-have. It is the operational foundation that makes portfolio-level decisions possible.
Frequently asked questions
What is change portfolio management and how is it different from programme management?
Change portfolio management is the discipline of overseeing and coordinating all active change initiatives across an organisation simultaneously, rather than managing each programme in isolation. Where programme management focuses on delivering a defined scope on time and on budget, change portfolio management focuses on the organisation’s total capacity to absorb change and the interactions between initiatives. It asks questions that no single programme team can answer: which employee groups are most overloaded, which sequencing decisions will reduce collision risk, and which governance structures can make cross-programme calls.
How do you measure cumulative change load on employee groups?
Measuring cumulative change load starts with identifying every active change initiative that affects a defined employee group, then assessing the intensity and timing of that impact. Intensity can be measured across dimensions such as the degree of behavioural change required, the volume of training, the frequency of communication, and the level of disruption to existing workflows. These assessments are then aggregated across all initiatives to produce a load profile for the group over time. The key challenge is maintaining this view dynamically, since change load shifts as programmes progress, timelines change, and new initiatives are added.
What governance structure works best for managing a change portfolio?
The most effective governance structure is one that has a cross-portfolio mandate and real decision-making authority, rather than a purely advisory or reporting function. This typically takes the form of a Change Advisory Board or Change Portfolio Forum that meets regularly, includes executives who own accountability across multiple programmes, and has the authority to re-sequence, delay, or modify initiatives based on portfolio-level capacity considerations. The critical factor is that membership and authority must cross business unit boundaries, since portfolio conflicts almost always involve competing priorities from different parts of the organisation.
How should change practitioners prioritise when multiple initiatives compete for the same resources?
Prioritisation in a change portfolio context should be based on a combination of strategic importance, time sensitivity, employee group impact, and dependency sequencing. Where two initiatives compete for the same leadership attention or employee bandwidth, the portfolio governance body should assess which programme’s momentum is more critical to protect at that point in time, and which can absorb delay or reduced intensity without jeopardising its outcomes. Practitioners can support this decision by providing clear data on the impact of delay for each initiative, as well as the cost to employee wellbeing and adoption quality of proceeding with both simultaneously.
