Drive Success with Change Management Certification

Many large government programs fail to achieve results despite vision and good intention—a fact documented by research and published studies. One of the largest, most far-reaching reasons cited for this failure is not effectively managing the people and organizational side of change.

The reasons range across all levels of program involvement. The skills of day-to-day leadership differ from the skills needed to drive organizational change. Officials are not aware of change management expertise and work products that can help ensure success. And many consultants claim to be change management experts but have limited exposure and experience with the spectrum of current change methods and models.

At Booz Allen, we have a long history of helping federal government clients successfully implement complex change initiatives. After extensively researching and evaluating current competency standards, educational programs, tools, and methods, we found that there are no established and widely accepted standards for change management.

We turned our attention and thought leadership to developing a new definition and approach to change that offers consistent and established standards, as well as certified experts with depth and breadth of knowledge across the range of change management principles, tools, and techniques.

Partnering with the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, we have created the first-of-its-kind graduate-level certification for Change Management Advanced Practitioners. The class of change facilitators knows when and how to apply the full suite of capabilities to drive successful change:

• Change strategy—Integrating and coordinating change
• Leadership engagement—Building a coalition of sponsors and management level buy-in
• Stakeholder analysis—Identifying groups impacted by change, including those who may be resistant
• Communications—Engaging stakeholders and incorporating feedback
• Human capital and workforce impact analysis—Addressing impacts of change on the workforce
• Learning and training—Addressing learning needs and opportunities
• Process and infrastructure—Identifying and addressing process changes affecting the organization and the infrastructure needed
• Project management—Integrating change management activities into PMO operations
• Performance management—Establishing metrics to track awareness, ability, understanding, and willingness of staff to adopt the change
• Change execution—Laying out a life cycle approach to all change management activities