One of the most important questions on everyone’s mind in a change is “when is it going to happen?”. Everyone needs his or her time to adjust, cope, freak out, or otherwise respond to the change. Even if your organization is providing a lot of formal support, people need to pace themselves and process the change in their own way.

So, it would seem reasonable that one of the primary messages you give your users early and often, is when the change would occur. Well, that wasn’t the case on one project I saw.

In this particular case, most of the change initiative was being driven and delivered by one individual’s department. This individual was also one of they key sponsors.

In every meeting this person would ask, “What should we be communicating?” The response was always the same; the most important piece of communication we needed to get out was the release date. Yet, while many other things got communicated, the date, the most important piece of information, remained elusive.

The executive explained that he wasn’t sure that he would hit the date and didn’t want to confuse people by communicating one date and then changing it

However, that is part of the change process. Certainly it is best for things to go as planned. More importantly, however, is that you have an open, honest dialog with your users about what is going on and how it will impact them whether you are on plan or not.

Give your users some credit; they’ll be able to “manage” the changes in dates, if necessary.

More importantly, not committing to the dates gave the project team an easy out. The biggest burden of a change effort should be on those people responsible for creating the change, not the users.

Ultimately, we discovered the real issue. This particular sponsor didn’t want himself or his department to look bad by not delivering on time. So, it was easier to place the burden on the user and keep them in the dark.

Fortunately, the users got through the first phase of the change without a lot of issues. However, that is because they users stepped up to the challenge. Unfortunately, they didn’t champion the new system nor were they excited about it. It was just another thing handed down to them by management.

That might work if you want your workforce to simply put up with the change. However if you are trying to transform the work you do, it will fall short.

If you focus more on your success than that of the people being changed, your efforts will ultimately fail.