It all depends on the people side

Finalizing my doctoral research back in 2016/2017 gave me a number of ‘aha’ moments along the way. Some of those ‘aha’ moments also came with quite a bit of frustration as new learnings emerged in front of me! As a researcher I am open to explore whatever results appear in front of me. Doing research within the area of how to succeed with transformation projects in a digital context I was aiming to find some new innovative technicalities that would make the difference. However, that didn’t work out that way. The themes that emerged in front up me were quite different.

What I found was how it all depends on the people side.

Now, that shouldn’t be any surprise – that it all depends on the people side. I mean – with a strong background within Change Management, Project Management, and Human Resource Management I would expect to know that part about the people side. However, it was a surprise.

One of my emerging themes were to engage and mobilize relevant internal stakeholders to success with the transformation. My recommendations for the leadership were to provide a structured attention to support initiated projects for people to feel supported. Again, this was clearly closely related to the people side, similar to my recommendations around making sure all projects and programs have clear mandates. Without a clear mandate it’s very difficult for people to succeed.

Lately, I have experienced how the importance of the people side receive more focus from various key players. I am thrilled to see the increased attention toward the fact, that we as humans play a key part of any transformation – whether it’s a digital transformation – or any other transformation or change for that matter.

So, the learning outcome? – it all depends on the people side.