Most large organizations don't keep a permanent 'change management' team on staff all the time - it just doesn't make economic sense.  When they need to make a change, they engage a third-party consulting firm to come in with a team of change consultants, project managers, trainers and facilitators.

External change consultants can be a great idea: They can bring an unbiased eye to a situation; they don't come with organizational baggage; and as experts they probably have an arsenal of tips and tricks that can make the process easier.

However, when organizations rely too heavily on external consultants, the change process can end up feeling like an external initiative - which means the changes walk out the door when the consultants do.

Change must be rooted in employees

A change initiative may be designed to deliver short- or long-term results, but whatever the schedule, the key to success is sustainability.  There's nothing more frustrating - or demoralizing - for organizations than to invest in a change project that doesn't 'stick'.

That's why it's so important for employees to be invested in the change process.  Employees must:

- Understand why the change is taking place

- Engage in the change process

- Invest in the success of the change initiative

When the team understands, engages and invests in change, they begin to live the changes in their day-to-day activities - which is the only way the organization reaps the benefits of the change process.

Ensuring employees are part of the change

1.  Communicate, communicate, communicate

Well before the initiative starts, make sure your external consultant has created a comprehensive communication plan for your team and the project team.  It's critical that everyone on both teams understand, and clearly communicate, what the change is all about, why it's important, and how it will affect employees.  Communicate early, often, and make sure the entire leadership team is communicating a consistent message.  This helps employees feel that they're 'in the loop' and starts the engagement process.  Ensure the communication comes from inside: Having a change management consultant stand up in front of your people to announce a change confuses employees and diminishes the leadership's credibility.

2.  Make key internal stakeholders part of the change team

There's nothing worse for employees than watching consultants they don't know continually going into secret boardroom meetings with C-suite executives, and wondering what decisions are being made that will affect their careers.  So make sure that your change team is sponsored from within and includes more employees than consultants.  A consultant can be an advisor to the team leader, or, if that isn't possible, the team leader him/herself.  The work of change, however, is best done by employees.

3.  Make employees part of the knowledge transfer process

Instead of relying on external trainers to teach employees about the changes, train internal managers to train their teams.  This has two benefits: Managers become invested and engaged in the transition, and employees feel the change is coming from within, not imposed from without.

4.  Consider a gradual transition

I've been involved in change projects where the external consultants all arrive on a Monday morning, work feverishly for X number of weeks, then all suddenly depart at once on a Friday afternoon, leaving employees wondering what the heck just happened to them.  In large-scale change initiatives, with large staffs of external consultants, it's better to plan for a gradual exit, with key change facilitators staying on-site after the change process is 'officially' complete.  Remember to make sure that any tasks which are transitioning to internal employees are covered and that the appropriate knowledge transfer occurs.

Utilize change consultants to enhance and expand your capabilities during a major change, but don't ever forget that you and your team will be responsible for sustaining it.  Laying the groundwork internally, engaging employees along the way, and investing in the long term will ultimately lead to success.

Employees can be your biggest champions when it comes to making changes within an organization: They can be cheerleaders, early adopters, and insight-providers.

Sometimes, however, people can be the biggest roadblocks when it comes to change. We all have some natural resistance to change, and that's okay - as humans, we're wired to strive for homeostasis.  But some people seem to be more resistant than others, and they tend to fit into 6 categories.

But here's something to keep in mind: Each of these 6 'resistant' archetypes has something to teach us.  It's sometimes hard to hear their message, but if we can look past the frustration (theirs, and our own) to the root cause of their resistance, we'll often find that they're providing useful insights into the change process - and listening to them will make the change process more successful.

Here's how to deal with them:

Yellers:

The Yeller thinks that if they voice their objections with sufficient volume, they'll eventually get their way - and they often do, because many people find Yellers intimidating.  The sad truth is that most Yellers have good points, but they're often lost in the decibels of their delivery.  The best way to deal with Yellers is simply to let them finish their rant, then pause for 10-15 seconds before you respond.  Most of the time, the dramatic post-yell silence will give them time to realize that yelling may not work this time.  It's important not to take Yellers personally - they're not yelling at you, they're yelling because they're finding the situation scary or stressful.  Sometimes they aren't feeling heard at all and they think raising their voice will solve that problem.  Acknowleding their concerns, and answering them, can often turn them into powerful allies.

Agree-ers:

These are the people who agree to everything when they're in the room, and then somehow never actually do anything they've agreed to.  Nor do they feel it necessary to support you outside of the meeting room the way they supported you inside of it.  It can be hard to spot an Agree-er until you discover that some key task hasn't been completed, or that they've been disagreeing with the agreed-upon direction behind your back, but the fix is relatively easy: Make the accountable and establish consequences for non-compliance.  Spell out what 'agreement' looks like and hold them accountable.  Ensure you follow up meetings with an email that clearly assigns their tasks, deadlines and a reporting method that makes it difficult for them to make excuses.

Critics:

The Critic thinks that the best way to make a 'contribution' to the change process is by poking holes in every idea or action item on the agenda.  The most effective way to defuse a chronic Critic is to respond to each criticism with "Thank you for bringing that up."  Then, if you've had the same concern, share what has been done to alleviate it.  If it is something that you and your team hadn't thought of, encourage the Critic to provide suggestions on how to best deal with that potential problem.  Try to remain open, as difficult as that may be.  the more open you are to hearing what the Critic has to say, the more they will pick and choose what they criticize.  One last thing: Don't ever wish your Critic would just 'shut up' and get back to work.  They can often save you from problems down the road - you just have to be open to hearing what they have to say.

Nay-Sayers:

Like the Critic, the Nay-Sayer tends to cast a sense of doom over the change initiative, but in a more general way:  "I just don't see how this is going to be possible in the timeframe we're talking about..."  Some experts say the most effective way to deal with Nay-Sayers is to ignore them and hope they'll get swept up in the tide of enthusiasm.  I say the best way is to speak to them privately, let them know how important they are to the initiative, and give them a feeling of ownership.  In many cases, it's just a matter of making Nay-Sayers feel more personally engaged.

Pollyannas:

The flip-side to the Nay-Sayers are the Pollyannas: The hopelessly optimistic types who think everything will 'somehow' work out even if they don't actually identify or address real problems.  Dealing with Pollyannas tends to involve clearly articulating 'what-if' scenarios ("What will happen if we leave this department as it is, as you suggest, while the other departments change?") and then guiding them to solutions.  It's helpful to note that Pollyannas may be just as scared of change as Yellers - they're just dealing with it differently.

Perfectionists

These are the people with self-professed 'high standards' who don't want to make a move until every T is crossed and every I is dotted - and who can always find a T or an I which hasn't been sufficiently dealt with.  Perfectionists tend to say that they're worried about the organization's 'reputation', but in fact are genuinely and personally uncomfortable with anything that isn't perfect.  This isn't the first time this Perfectionist has used his or her 'high standards'.  Demonstrating that you have a strong contingency plan, and that the 'worst-case' scenario won't actually bring disaster, can reduce their fears and encourage them to take action.

When you're dealing with 'people roadblocks' to change, the most important thing to remember is that almost all of them are just expressions of the natural fear and anxiety that the prospect of change elicits from all of us.  Each one of these roadblocks can be turned into precious building blocks as you move through an important change initiative.  Finding a way to calm their fears and address the anxiety can turn even the most negative archetype into an enthusiastic change supporter.

It's time to become model-agnostic.

I'm a big believer in the value of theoretical rigor - I guess that comes from my graduate work.  In fact, I tend to think that anyone who works in a professional services field should have a solid grounding in the theories that underpin their specialty.  Change management, in particular, is a field that can so often get mistaken for a touchy-feely offshoot of HR, I'd like to see more practitioners with advanced degrees in the field.

(An example of a diagram which looks nice, but means almost nothing when you think about it.)

However - and it's a big 'however - it's important to remember that if all the change management models we learn in degree programs were as true as 2+2=4, we wouldn't call them 'theories'.  We'd call them 'universal truths'.

And therein we have the basis of one of the biggest problems in change management: The $25,000 diagram.

What do I mean?

All too often I see change management professionals who try to use the theory approach to solve every change-related challenge.  They dust off their favorite change management model from a textbook, plug in some numbers and arrows, add some bullet points about the marvelous results this model will magically achieve - and voila!  The client gets a nice-looking PowerPoint presentation, the heart of which is an attractive diagram that appears to demonstrate a few simple actions that will transform the organization.  And a bill for $25,000 for this insight.

There's a big difference between theory and implementation

Theory is great as far as it goes, but it's only part of the solution - in my experience, implementation, execution and results are more than 75% of the change process.

What's more, every organization is different, and so far I've never encountered one that fit neatly into a single change model or approach. There's always an angle that isn't accounted for in the theory, a business function which isn't accommodated in the handy 4-square diagram, and a learning curve which isn't reflected in the results grid.

So my recommendation, when you're planning your change process, is to take a model-agnostic approach.  Instead of relying on a particular theory, look for a plan which spends more time on how the implementation will roll out - and how it will affect your people - than on how it should roll out, based on the theoretical diagram.

Do you really understand what a successful change timeline should look like?

Thirty years ago, I was living Tel Aviv, Israel, and one of the few radio stations which broadcast in English had a wonderful tagline, from the John Lennon song:  "All we are saying is give peace a chance."  The implication, of course, is that peace takes time to take root.

So does change.

Lately I've seen a disturbing trend in business, no doubt influenced by the ultra-fast startup culture: Changes are made to improve the organization, but before the changes can take root and start to bear fruit, someone declares them 'unsuccessful' and begins the process of implementing new changes.

Businesses will tell you that they don't have time to wait around and 'give change a chance'.  They need to see a demonstrable ROI now: They need to satisfy shareholders, or they need cash to invest in the business or acquire another one; they're often afraid that if they aren't Doing Something Big and Different right this minute, the competition will sneak up behind them and suddenly they'll be left behind, or a negative media profile will send their share prices plummeting; or someone will suggest that senior leadership isn't innovative enough. Or something.

But when organizations continually make investments in change that they never see through, they become doomed to a downward spiral: Ever-more desperate short-term measures that simply don't work - and definitely don't deliver long-term success.

Understand that different change initiatives require different timelines

I'm not suggesting that all change needs to happen on glacial timelines.  Change can often be implemented quickly and successfully if the right plan is in place to get it done. But it's important to give change initiatives the right amount of time to succeed: The right amount of time for implementation, the right amount of time for transition, and the right amount of time to assess whether the change efforts have in fact been successful. Companies which understand the difference between short-, medium- and long-term goals - and expect results on corresponding timelines - will do better.

Some business changes do result in immediate benefits.  A quick process redesign, a shift to a new supplier, even a small team reorganization are changes that can deliver results in 3 months or less.

However, when the scale of change is larger, and involves exponentially more people - an enterprise-wide technology change, a fundamental refocus of the core competencies of the business - the timeframe becomes correspondingly longer as wel. The mor epeople involved, the more time is required: When a technology change requires that everyone from the Senior VP to the division manager to the entry-level employee now has to make changes in their day-to-day activities, change simply takes longer to map, implement and manage.

The scope and timeframes of metrics will also depend on the change initiative. Changing the way a sales force sells a certain product line has a simple, and relatively short-term, measure of success: Have sales increased?

But let's say the entire sales process has also been transformed, including new technology and a redesigned supply chain management system. Now the sales force has to sell the products differently, manage the process differently, and educate clients about how the new supply chain system will change the way products are ordered, delivered and invoiced.

IN this case, simply measuring 'sales increases' may not be the most effective metric, at least in the short term. It may be more appropriate to measure client adoption, client feedback, increases in reorders or yearly client value - all of which tend to be longer-term measures of success.

How can organizations do a better job of 'giving change a chance'? Well, I tend to think about change the way Warren Buffett thinks about investing: "Always invest [in change] for the long term."

(...and how do you prevent an employee mutiny?)

It's a tough economy, and you've had to make some tough decisions about downsizing.  The process has been stressful for everyone, and now senior management is hoping they'll see real results reflected on the bottom line - and soon.

But what about all the employees left standing?  They know it's been a difficult few years, and they know that you had to make some difficult choices.  But they also know that their work environment has changed - and that they're probably going to have to do more work wtih fewer resources.

(Your workplace, or Mutiny on the Bounty?)

After a downsizing, it's not unusual for an organization to experience low morale, high stress levels, and some general digruntlement among workers.  They're struggling to handle an increased workoload, but the recent changes have them worried about their future - and that can be a productivity-sapping combination.

It's easy for employers to dismiss these concerns, with a "They should be thankful they still have a job" attitude and a "Stop complaining and get back to work" approach.  This is a mistake.

The people who survived the downsizing are very likely your top performers - that's why you kept them.  When you engage and support them through a difficult transitional period, you'll not only keep them from looking for new opportunities elsewhere, but you'll also encourage them to work more productively, which will get you the healthier bottom line you're looking for.

You want these layoff survivors to take on new responsibilities and a faster, more efficient pace of work.  Giving them the resources to do that is critical to the ongoing success of each department and, ultimately, the organization.  Help the workers left behind by guiding them through a process to streamline their current workload.  Getting rid of excess, non-productive work is a win-win:  It focuses your team on doing only what delivers the best ROI, and it helps prevent burnout.

Practical strategies for making the workload fit the work - and the workers:

Identify key business imperatives: You already did a cost and efficiency audit as part of your downsizing process.  Go back to this data and identify 5-7 key business imperatives for your company.

Align tasks with key imperatives:  Challenge your team to streamline their work, focusing only on what supports the established business imperatives. Engage stakeholders and solicit input - you might be surprised at how enthusiastic your people are to implement change that will drive demonstrable results more efficiently.

Provide support:  Ensure all your internal business partners know the situation and provide alternatives for getting necessary work done by the established deadlines (such as funding temp resources, outsourcing IT or other time-consuming work, providing additional training, or creating new cross-disciplinary teams).

Institute a 24-hour time-off rule:  Inform employees that no work will be done and no emails will be sent from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday.  This gives overworked employees 'official permission' to take some downtime to recharge and reenergize.  (If you need 24/7 coverage, institute a rotating on-call system so everyone gets some officially sanctioned time off.)

Be the best example:  As the boss, your employees and peers are looking to you to set an example. Show them with your actions, attitude and demeanor that a leaner workforce doesn't mean a burned-out, overworked, depressed workforce. Demonstrate a balance between your work and personal life, and your employees will feel more comfortable doing the same - and they'll appreciate you for it. Setting a good example can, by itself, raise morale and productivity, which is a win-win for everyone.

Helping employees to streamline their workload - and feel more positive about their changed situation - not only results in improved productivity but will also give your business the edge it needs to survive in the new economy.  A valued, engaged and energized workforce will give 120% to their work - which is key to positioning the organization for long-term success.

Big pharma needs to embrace change, but it's a delicate balance.

A while back I wrote about how change management in pharmaceutical companies involves managing people, pace and planning in the change process.

But pharma faces a larger dichotomy:  How do you foster innovation and growth in an industry where process and procedure are absolutely essential?  How do you encourage the lateral thinking that leads to new medicines when producing those medicines requires stringent adherence to specific processes which ensure safety and quality control?

In my experience, managing change, even in a process-based environment, starts with understanding the psychology of change and how people react to it.

Human beings - whether they work in pharma or in any other industry - are hard-wired for homeostasis:  They want to get to a state of equilibrium where they feel most comfortable and secure.  Changes in the work environment disrupt the homeostasis people have achieved in their day-to-day work lives.  When a change is handled poorly, the drive to get back to a sense of homeostasis can be a real obstacle to successful change implementation.

So what do you do?

Fortunately, humans are also hardwired for storytelling:  They'll become engaged in stories that have a 'goal', they find narratives compelling, and are driven to 'finish the story'.  These traits can be used to institutionalize change even in the most procedural-based organizations.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Successful change management happens when leaders understand both the psychological and the operational effects of change on their employees, and how they intersect
2. The better organizations understand the psychological effects of change on their employees, the more they can plan for smooth transitions
3. When employees are encouraged to redefine what change means to them - acknowledging the fears engendered by moving out of homeostasis - the more engaged they become in the process and the more they're able to 'own' the story
4. When employees 'own' their own change story, they are more likely to be invested in coming to a successful conclusion

Instead of seeing change as a short-term, finite event that occurs at irregular intervals, make gradual, continuous change part of the organizational 'story' and culture.  By establishing a culture in which gradual change exists side-by-side with process and procedure, pharma companies can establish an environment in which 'homeostasis' includes both adherence to procedures and a more positive response to change.

Your sales force can be your best supporters - as long as you manage the process

One of the best things about leading a change management initiative which is focused on transforming the sales function is that salespeople, by their very nature, tend to be enthusiastic about change:  They're good at spotting opportunities, they adopt and adapt rapidly, and they aren't afraid of 'getting out there' and trying new things.

Except these qualities are also exactly the ones that can get a change management project into real trouble.

Salespeople tend to want to take action, and they like to communicate, so without the right controls in place, a change management initiative can misfire - the sales force can start implementing changes before the final pieces are all in place, and the rumor mill can go into hyperdrive.

So how do you manage a change initiative which has a large sales force component?

Start by managing these factors:

Ensure you have the 'big picture' mapped out before you start talking about the details:  Getting into the details before you know what the end point will be often triggers early adopters to take action - but without knowing the end point, you risk sending people off in the wrong direction.

Engage salespeople in the process:  The best salespeople are highly engaged in the organization and in their own role in it - they have a keen sense that their own effort produces demonstrable results.  Dropping changes on them without getting their input or feedback can cause alienation - which means you could lose your best salespeople.

Communicate as much accurate information as possible:  Salespeople are natural communicators, and in the absence of accurate information, they'll end up speculating, which can cause misinformation to take hold.  During the change process, it's important to communicate early and often, to ensure the right message is disseminated.

Understand the psychological effect of change:  Top salespeople tend to bring their emotions to work - and that's a good thing, because it helps them build relationships with customers.  But it also means that they can have strong feelings about change initiatives.  It's worth taking the time  to make sure that the sales team clearly understands the change - the good and the bad, and how it will affect them - in order to get them on board.

Your sales force can become your most enthusiastic supporters, and they can lead the rest of the organization in a change initiative - as long as you properly harness their natural strangths to do it.

When it comes to keeping great employees, compensation is still the most important motivator.

Recently I read a couple of articles on Inc.com by Jeff Haden:  "8 Things Your Employees Need Most" and "4 Rewards That Are More Powerful Than Money".

In them, Jeff talksabout how employees are motivated by things like 'freedom', 'mission' and 'rewards' than they are about straightforward compensation packages (i.e. salary and benefits).  He even says "Employees don't want to work for a paycheck; they want to work with and for people."

It's true that not everyone is motivated by the same things, and everyone likes to feel respected and valued in their workplace.  But the reality is that day-to-day intangibles like being asked for input or being recognized for a job well done are short-term motivators that only go so far.  Over the longer term, as your employees look to achieve things in other areas of their lives - taking vacations, buying homes, having children - money starts to assume more importance.

If people really preferred 'people' over 'paycheck', they'd be doing volunteer work instead of spending time in productivity analysis meetings.

The internet is filled with opinions.  The facts are often held within organizations.

Most large organizations, especially ones with turnover and attrition challenges, conduct 'exit interviews'.  When employees leave, they meet wtih someone from HR and discuss their experiences with the organization and their reasons for leaving.

These exit interviews aren't anonymous, so employees - especially the A-list ones, who know better than to burn their bridges - are circumspect.  When they're asked about why they're leaving, they talk about neutral, inoffensive things like "I was offered a terrific opportunity to grow my skills" or "I've always wanted tow ork in a startup environment" or even "The new job means I don't have to spend as much time communting".

However, when you ask recently-departed employees why they really left, and do it anonymously, they paint a very different picture:  The majority say that they left because they wanted to make more money (or a larger compensation package).  But this information is never made public, because what company wants to admit that 90% of their people leave simply to make more money?

(Now, it's worth noting that the second most common reason that top performers leave a job is that they could no longer stand an overbearing or incompetent manager - but this is a distant second to compensation.)

I definitely agree that the intangibles - consistent feedback, rewards and recognition, employee engagement, asking for input and ideas - all contribute to a positive work environment, and a positive work environment promotes productivity, builds the employment brand, and can compensate for things like an inconvenient office location or a high-stress industry.  But in the long-term, below-average compensation will cost you your top performers.

And maybe it's better that way.

It happens all the time:  I'm taking questions after a speaking engagement or meeting with senior leadership execs, and sooner or later someone says "I really want us to become like the Google of our industry!  How can we do that?"

I understand the sentiment:  In just 14 years, Google has become the dominant player in search, online advertising and browsing; made smart decisions like YouTube and Blogger; and, perhaps most importantly, built revenues of $37 billion annually.  It's got a cool brand identity and its 'Don't Be Evil' mantra is a strong one.  It's hard to argue with that kind of success.

I agree that corporate culture - which Google has in spades - is a key driver of success.  It's natural to think you want to built an organization where there are free snacks for everyone, people bike around the 'campus', and you attract the best and brightest.

But Google is a high-tech company which lives and dies by maintaining a reputation for being right out there on the edge and filling their organization with hyper-creative people who are passionate about things like artificial intelligence, neuroscience and Raspberry PI.

These things aren't necessarily going to be achievable if you're in the business of organic food products or high-end home fashions, and in fact they may not be best goals for your business, either.

Here's why:

1. Your people:  As we discussed the other day, different industries attract different types of people.  Unless your organization has a whole lot of eccentric, coffee-fuelled engineers and developers hanging around, trying to turn yourself into a Google Campus is going to be an exercise in futility
2. Your industry:  Having a reputation for being cool and cutting-edge is great for a high-tech company like Google; it's less attractive for a company in the business of making baby products, where a more traditional, family-oriented feel is more appropriate
3. Your business goals:  It's tempting to want to be a $37 billion organization - but that was never Google's sole goal and it shouldn't be yours.  Make sure you have solid business goals that make sense for your organization and the vision you are trying to achieve, and the money will follow
4. Your marketplace:  An organic foods company which seems to spend more time on building profits and achieving world domination than on promoting healthy eating is soon going to find they've lost credibility with their target audience (see my note above about your business)
5. Your history:  Google was able to start from scratch with a very specific vision.  If you've already been in business for 25+ years, with an established culture, brand and place in the market, trying to shoehorn your organization into a whole new mold may not be the best use of your resources.

If you want to encourage the qualities you admire in Google, like following a compelling vision or encouraging employees to be passionate about their work, I'm all for it.

But the most successful organizations, like Google - the ones which lead their industries - are ones which are realistic about their culture, their business goals, their people and their marketplace.  The beest way to 'be like Google' is to try to be the best in your field - not the best in someone else's.

You chose your people because they love structure.
Don't expect them to love change, too.

Scarcely a day goes by that I don't read another article about the benefits of entrepreneurial thinking in the workplace and how fantastic it is.

It's not unusual for change-based initiatives, even in large organizations, to start with this desire to be more 'entrepreneurial', to be more 'responsive' and 'nimble', and to tap into 'big thinking'.

That's great, as far as it goes - but when it comes to actually implementing business changes, things are a little more complicated.

The pharmaceutical industry isn't Silicon Valley

In the last 20 years, I've led a lot of change, transformation and training initiatives, both client-side and as a consultant.  During that time I've learned that it doesn't matter what the spreadsheet says will happen if you make some changes, your success ultimately depends on one factor:  People.

Different industries attract - and flourish with - different types of people.  While tech startups and ad agencies do best with people who like to think of themselves as highly dynamic, creative 'change agent' types, the pharmaceutical industry does better with structured thinkers who are comfortable with process and rules.

This isn't a bad thing:  The pharma industry is highly regulated, legislated and controlled, and it's important that serious rigor is brought to everything they do.  It's not unusual for a new product to spend 10-20 years in research and development before it launches, and I for one am happy about this - I'm much more comfortable knowing that the medicine I'm taking in the morning has had years of careful testing and scrutiny before it's hit the shelves.

However, this does have significant implications for change management within the pharma and healthcare environments, and it's important to address these.

Successful change within pharma

Ultimately, leading and managing change within pharma companies - especially large, global ones - comes down to addressing 3 key factors:

1.  People

Recognize that the majority of your employees are more comfortable with structure and an established set of parameters than they are with adapting to rapidly changing environments.

This doesn't mean they will be resistant to change efforts - they're more than intelligent enough to recognize the need for change - but it does mean that they may require more communication, more encouragement to become fully engaged, and more reassurance throughout the process.

2.  Pace

When you're working within a highly structured environment, it's important to understand that the pace of change may not be quite as fast as senior leadership would like.

Most pharma companies are, of necessity, large organizations that simply can't turn on a dime.  Trying to implement change too quickly can set the stage for failure; starting and stopping will cost you momentum and make it more difficult to engage employees.  Setting a realistic, steady pace for change from the beginning will go a long way to ensuring success.

3.  Planning

Half the battle in any successful change initiative is successful planning.  In the pharma industry, it's even more important to ensure that scope, requirements and expectations are established at the outset - and that there aren't dramatic changes of direction mid-stream.

You'll find your employees will be much more engaged and enthusiastic - and productive! - throughout the process when they feel that the change is unfolding as planned and that they can see a clear outcome.  After all, that's how they approach their own work.