The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management

6

Leading and Managing the Change

I have to admit that as a learning and organization development professional, I knew next to nothing about how annual budgets were approved in my organization. Yet there I was, sitting in a project kickoff meeting, listening to a presentation about the company’s plan to completely overhaul its budget approval process. The company’s CFO had just wrapped up explaining why the current process wasn’t working and how he needed all of us to design a new approach and implement it across the organization. I scanned the room and saw that most of the meeting participants had far more expertise in finance and accounting than I did. What could I add to this effort, I wondered?

But then Sunita, the company’s director of financial ...