Question

Very briefly describe for your colleagues the most recent or influential change initiative you have been a part of. Now analyze it for its overall impact on the organization----was it implemented via a Project Management process? Was it intended to change the culture (how we do things around here) of the organization? If so, did it succeed? Was there one Change Agent or were there many who were intended to filter the changes throughout the organization? How disruptive was the process in the organization?

Answer 1

ISO certification is the change initiative that was implemented on a project management basis in our educational institution. The ISO certification consisted of various stages including

• Project Introduction – In this stage, employees were informed about the ISO certification and the external quality consultant responsible for ISO certification was introduced.
• Project planning – In this stage, the external quality consultant discussed the organization documentation practices with the key persons in the organization and arrived at standard documentation frameworks.
• Project realization – This standard documentation framework were implemented in each department under the supervision of the key persons identified by the external consultant and the results were recorded
• Project control – The key persons were appointed as quality auditors and checked each department for the compliance of the documentation procedures as advised by the ISO certification standards
• Project assessment – Finally, the quality audit team from ISO came and inspected the records to certify the organization as ISO standard

The ISO certification was intended to change the entire documentation maintenance of the organization. The old manual practices of documentation were converted to a digital format with less paperwork in the entire organization. The ISO certification was a success with the certification being awarded to the organization by ISO after a quality audit.

The change agent was the external quality consultant responsible for developing standard documents after studying the various business processes, procedures and systems of the organization. The external quality consultant provided training on the ISO certification to all the employees of the organization to equip themselves with the new documentation standards.

The process was disruptive in the regular process in the organization. The ISO certification added more work pressure and the staff had to perform the extra work of shifting the old manual records to the new digital records as advised by the ISO certification. In addition, the employees had to attend the ISO certification training program after normal working hours. Overall, the ISO certification was beneficial to the employee self-development and organization development as a whole.