Seven Consulting's Delivery Playbook
Seven Consulting’s Delivery Playbook gets inside what really makes large delivery and change programs succeed and where they quietly fail. Built from real delivery experience, delivering over $5bn of programs a year with an average of over 99% customer satisfaction for the last 10 years, the series brings real-world experience in delivery leadership, project and program execution and change.
Designed for busy leaders, each short episode turns proven frameworks, lessons learned, and delivery challenges into actionable insights that improve decision-making when the stakes are high. Every episode uses AI‑assisted production to convert proven frameworks and case studies into short, practical audios for busy leaders. Our advice remains practical, honest, and grounded in real execution and will show you why our first clients are still trusting us with their most important projects and programs.
Seven Consulting's Delivery Playbook
Building a Change Management Function
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Change inevitably happens from projects in your organisation, but does it happen the same way twice? The signs of variability may be familiar: Change is managed well on one project and left to chance on the next. Different Change practitioners take their own approach with no shared standard to fall back on. And even when the effort is there, it's hard to know if the change actually landed because little was tracked to prove it.
Where would you start? In the latest episode of Delivery Playbook, we unpack The Levers to Pull and Mistakes to Avoid When Building an Enterprise Change Function. This material is drawn from our GM Change Management, Temre Green's session at our 2024 Delivery Summit.
The episode walks through the different types of Change structures with real trade-offs depending on what your organisation wants to achieve. From there, we cover the four levers that shape how the function actually operates day to day. We then close out with seven common mistakes organisations make when building a Change function along with mitigation strategies for each.
Welcome to Seven Consulting's Delivery Playbook, where we share the powerful concepts that make Seven Consulting Australia's best program delivery company. In this session, we are talking about building an in-house change management function.
SPEAKER_00This material was developed by our general manager change management Temory Green. With experience in building, scaling and maturing change management practices, she has shared the value of an in-house change function, including sample goals and the levers that you can push and pull. As a bonus, we'll also discuss some of the common mistakes that you'll want to avoid when building a change function.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And this isn't just abstract theory, is it? We're drawing directly on some fantastic material and IP from our 2024 Delivery Summit. And the core idea here is around helping organizations move beyond those inconsistent sort of project-by-project change efforts.
SPEAKER_00Which can be so variable, right? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Consistency is important. Standardizing your approach, well, it immediately helps with knowledge management. People know where to find things, how things are done. It supports continuous improvement cycles.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. We're talking about shifting your organization from that place of high variability to a place where you get consistent results and then ideally improve results over time.
SPEAKER_00Improving results really matters, and the value you unlock there is huge. Temri shares examples of improved results such as comprehensive risk management and strategic alignment of company-wide changes.
SPEAKER_01The strategic alignment piece is so critical too. It means leadership can make more informed decisions about which changes to back and which ones to prioritize.
SPEAKER_00You stop, you know, having individual change managers dispersed across the company and instead bringing practitioners together into a central function.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it makes sense.
SPEAKER_00So when we think about the goals for setting up an in-house change management function, it's important to be clear on what's driving the organization in that direction. For example, are there pain points that need to be solved?
SPEAKER_01Right. So really understand what the burning platform is for building the function.
SPEAKER_00And Tem Ree shares an example from one organization's goals from her experience. This organization wanted to develop their overall change capability, build consistency in how change was managed, improve how benefits were achieved, and balance the sheer volume of change against the organization's real capacity to absorb it. So the question for listeners really is what's the burning platform? What's the pain point driving your organization in this direction? Because that's your starting point.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. Understanding that why is crucial. Because as we'll see, different drivers might lead you towards different kinds of structures.
SPEAKER_00Okay, perfect segue. Let's unpack those different structures, or in other words, the different types of in-house change management functions.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there are a variety, but we'll focus on three examples.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01These three are reasonably common in Australian corporates, and they sort of exist on a spectrum from least formal and structured to most formal and structured.
SPEAKER_00Alright, so where do we start on that spectrum?
SPEAKER_01It's important then the structure aligns to the organization. Let's kick things off at the less formal end with change communities of practice. Think of these as informal networks of change management professionals.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01They're really focused on continuous learning, practitioners sharing lessons learned, and general collaborative growth. Often they are set up organically, maybe without an executive mandate.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds really good for peer support, sharing what works, that kind of thing, but maybe limited in enforcing enterprise-wide standards.
SPEAKER_01That's the key distinction. Yeah. They're less about enforcing standards. Their success typically depends on people voluntarily participating.
SPEAKER_00So the momentum might vary a lot.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And their direct effect on the broader organization's formal processes can be limited.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so moving up the scale and formality, what's next?
SPEAKER_01Next up, you've got change centers of excellence. These are more semi-formal hubs of expertise.
SPEAKER_00Hubs, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hubs like for best practices in change management. Their job is really to elevate the change maturity across the whole organization. They'll develop a framework, the toolkit, the templates, and the change standards that in-house change practitioners would ideally follow.
SPEAKER_00And is there any potential downside with this approach?
SPEAKER_01Well, there's some risks in a really large organization that different business units set up their own center of excellence. With multiple in the organization, there can be fragmentation and different expectations. You know, there's room for not having consistency.
SPEAKER_00Got it. Okay. Does that bring us to the most formal and structured option then?
SPEAKER_01That would be the change management office. This is the most formal, the most structured approach to managing organizational change initiatives across an entire organization.
SPEAKER_00Got it. So how does it work?
SPEAKER_01A change management office is responsible for developing standardized methods and ensuring those standards are followed consistently across the entire organization. They usually manage the whole portfolio of change initiatives and often hold the budget or the pool of change resources deployed to the projects and programs.
SPEAKER_00That sounds like it would deliver consistency, but what about improving results?
SPEAKER_01That's definitely a part of this too. Well, because with this central function, there's oversight of all change initiatives. The head of the function can create a single view of change to enhance prioritization and decision making. With a view of all projects and corresponding benefits, this central function can manage risks effectively too.
SPEAKER_00That sounds really helpful for the organization. And is there a downside of centralizing with a change management office?
SPEAKER_01You almost inevitably introduce more administrative overhead. And depending on the organization, the standardization may stifle innovation.
SPEAKER_00Right. So some things to be mindful of if going in this direction. That tension between getting everyone on the same page versus being agile enough for different needs. I'd see that as an interesting decision point.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And once you've kind of settled on a structure, or at least a direction, you then have to define how it actually operates day to day. Okay, so that brings us to the levers that each organization can pull when building a change function.
SPEAKER_00That's right. These are the things you adjust to fine-tune how the function works. Tamarie shared four of the levers, so we'll go through each of them. Lever one is the operating model and reporting lines.
SPEAKER_01So how change management resources are deployed to service projects, what are the reporting lines, how performance is managed, that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Now you've got different options here too, like fully centralized, fully decentralized, but many organizations find themselves drawn to the hub and spoke model.
SPEAKER_01Hub and spoke, trying to get the best of both worlds, I suppose? A central hub setting standards providing governance and then spokes, the change practitioners in this instance, are embedded or closely aligned with specific business units.
SPEAKER_00That's the idea. In theory it works well. The big advantage or the pro is that the change managers and the spokes develop really deep knowledge of their specific stakeholder business. They're right there, integrated.
SPEAKER_01Makes sense. But what's the con?
SPEAKER_00It's often accountability. If the lines aren't super clear between what the central hub owns versus what the business unit spoke owns, well you can get slow decision making or potentially blame.
SPEAKER_01Or finger pointing when things go wrong.
SPEAKER_00Or finger pointing, yeah. Who really owns the risk? Is it the central office's standard that failed or the business unit's implementation? It can get messy.
SPEAKER_01And reporting lines are a big part of that operating model too, right? Who a change manager reports to must have a big impact.
SPEAKER_00Huge impact. For instance, if they report directly into the project manager.
SPEAKER_01They're embedded in the day-to-day delivery. Very practical.
SPEAKER_00Very practical for daily tasks, yes. But if they report directly into the change management function itself, the central hub, well, that builds consistency for the practitioner. It standardizes their technical skills, gives them a clearer career path within change management.
SPEAKER_01Okay, but there could be a downside that the practitioner doesn't get direct feedback from the project team.
SPEAKER_00Fair point.
SPEAKER_01And the third option, reporting to the project sponsor.
SPEAKER_00Reporting direct to the sponsor gives the change manager clout direct access to influence, especially around managing benefits realization, really boosts their strategic power.
SPEAKER_01But maybe isolates them a bit from their change and project peers?
SPEAKER_00Could do. So you have to weigh it up. A matrix reporting line is also possible and can provide a good mix of performance feedback. You just want to watch out for consistency and feedback across the change function.
SPEAKER_01Makes sense. Okay, shall we move on?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's move to lever two.
SPEAKER_01The second lever to consider is the funding model. This feels foundational. Get the money wrong and nothing else works.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much. And the key insightful question here, drawing from Tem Ree's work, is how are you going to fund the change managers and the function?
SPEAKER_01Well, project spend would vary each financial year, right? So I'd think you'd need to know operating costs, but then how to get the right blend of resources to align to project investment.
SPEAKER_00By blend, you mean like permanent staff versus contractors versus consultants?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. You need a thoughtful mix. Permanent employees for that core knowledge and stability. Contractors and consultant perhaps for scaling up during peak demand. And then again, looking to consultants for really specialized skills or major transformation.
SPEAKER_00And getting that blend right helps manage costs and also keeps a consistent core.
SPEAKER_01That's important. Cost management and consistency in your core resource pool.
SPEAKER_00Okay. But then how are the actual change activities on projects funded? I know funding by project is common, seems logical, and aligns costs to the initiative.
SPEAKER_01That's right, and it's often easier to get sign-off for project-specific funding, but there is a con to that funding source. Which is lead time and scope for change management. Change managers often get brought in way too late, only after the funding is fully locked down, and unfortunately, that project funding may not cover true end-to-end change management.
SPEAKER_00Like the project can be under-resourced or the budget doesn't allow for any effort post-go live.
SPEAKER_01Pretty much. Just when you need to focus on adoption and benefits. The funding often dries up long before you know if the change actually stuck.
SPEAKER_00So what's the alternative then?
SPEAKER_01The work could be funded by the business unit, and that works well in terms of the change manager's daily effort in the business.
SPEAKER_00I suppose the issue there is that the change manager could be spread across the business unit rather than focusing on the specific project initiative.
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_00Is there another funding option?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a blended model where the in-house change function is funded centrally, and then the change practitioners are funded by individual projects.
SPEAKER_00Okay, that sounds robust. Any downsides there?
SPEAKER_01Alignment is important between the function and projects because some activities can become rather cumbersome, you know, to manage all resourcing, chargebacks, forecasting. It needs good administration.
SPEAKER_00Right, needs mature processes alongside it. Okay, let's talk about the third lever. Sounds like this is where more value gets created with change management's extended role.
SPEAKER_01Yes. This is about the function's role before the project starts and after the delivery is done. So before projects even get approved through to post-implementation work.
SPEAKER_00The change function should be involved.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Involved in scoping the change effort needed for the project to go into the business case, providing input on the likely cost and complexity of the human side of the change, and crucially advising on the capacity of the impacted teams.
SPEAKER_00So flagging if a business unit is already drowning in change before another project gets added to the pile.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. The benefit is more accurate investment decisions up front, less waste down the line, and maybe most importantly, actively managing and hopefully reducing change fatigue for employees.
SPEAKER_00And then the after-project part, are we talking about benefits realization?
SPEAKER_01First, it's about achieving project outcomes, which should be linked to benefits realization. The function plays a vital role here in tracking and demonstrating the value achieved through user proficiency and adoption. If people don't use the new system or follow the new process in the intended way, the promised business benefits are unlikely to materialize in the agreed timeframe.
SPEAKER_00Which neatly proves the value of the change management effort itself.
SPEAKER_01Precisely. And this is where the source material from the delivery summit had that really interesting point about nil downside.
SPEAKER_00Ah yes, tell me about that again. Surely there's always a cost.
SPEAKER_01Oh, there's definitely a cost to running the function and doing this extended work. But the argument is that there's effectively no downside to making that investment when you compare it to the potential return.
SPEAKER_00How so?
SPEAKER_01Because the cost of non-adoption, the cost of a project not meeting its agreed outcomes, and then failing to deliver its benefits and return to the business is almost always exponentially greater than the cost of funding a change function to ensure that adoption happens.
SPEAKER_00So the function acts like an insurance policy on the main project investment.
SPEAKER_01That's a great way to put it. By protecting that huge capital investment through proper pre-scoping and post-implementation tracking of outcomes and benefits, the cost to the function ensures a return.
SPEAKER_00It shifts the view from change being a cost center to being an investment protection mechanism. Wow, that's a powerful reframe.
SPEAKER_01It really is. Okay. Finally, the fourth lever, which is the change management services framework and tools. This is about what end-to-end change management looks like and how mature the function is.
SPEAKER_00So I think the goal is to create that consistency we talked about earlier and also improve outcomes, you know, improve the likelihood of change management positively impacting project outcomes.
SPEAKER_01That's right. And you want to see those frameworks and tools actually reflect the type of projects across the organization.
SPEAKER_00How so?
SPEAKER_01They should reflect on the delivery method and reflect the typical size of investment and types of changes.
SPEAKER_00So what else should be considered in this lever?
SPEAKER_01An in-house change function can take this in a few different directions, but two points often come up. And they are if the project management framework and change management framework should align. And also if an external methodology should be applied.
SPEAKER_00Let's take those one at a time. So what's the pro and con of aligning to the project management framework?
SPEAKER_01Integration makes a lot of sense for strong delivery and role clarity. So alignment is a good thing. What you don't want to have happen is for the change activities to become a tick-the-box type of exercise.
SPEAKER_00Got it, makes sense. So what's the thinking on integrating an external methodology?
SPEAKER_01It can certainly add a level of maturity and best practice to a new function. So that does make sense and can work. An example of this could be applying ProSize ADCAR method, for example. However, the potential downside is around getting your change practitioners certified in the methodology. There is also a risk that as the function matures, one method could be limiting.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_01Well, for a method that only looks at change delivery through one lens, for example, could limit what the function could do to evolve with the business and improve its outcomes.
SPEAKER_00Fascinating. Okay, so we've covered the different structures and we've covered the four levers that we can work with. Now let's talk about what goes wrong.
SPEAKER_01Yes, the common pitfalls.
SPEAKER_00Yes, the lessons learned. Temri highlighted seven common mistakes, and honestly, avoiding these is often more critical than picking the perfect structure initially.
SPEAKER_01Okay, let's get into them. Mistake number one.
SPEAKER_00Building the change management function in isolation. This is a classic. Failing to treat the build of the function itself like a proper change project.
SPEAKER_01So designing it in a back room, so to speak, without talking to the people who will actually use its services or interact with it, like the PMO or business leaders.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. If you do that, it just lands as another layer of bureaucracy that people haven't bought into and will probably resist. So the mitigation is Collaborative design, foster that engagement right from the start. You have to incorporate what the project delivery teams need, what the business leaders need, and importantly, get those business leaders to see themselves as an extension of the function, championing it and not just being passive recipients.
SPEAKER_01Makes sense. Mistake number two?
SPEAKER_00Low clarity or disagreement on who the customer of the change management services actually is.
SPEAKER_01If you don't know who you're serving, you can't design effective services. Is your primary customer, the project sponsor, the project manager, the end users who are impacted? It can vary, but it's important to define that.
SPEAKER_00So you need to clarify that up front.
SPEAKER_01Actively agree with your key stakeholders who the primary customer is for different types of engagements. Then design your service offering around their needs, and crucially, build in feedback loops so you can continuously refine what you offer based on their experience.
SPEAKER_00Okay, mistake number three sounds like getting lost in the details.
SPEAKER_01It is a disproportionate focus on the enterprise function itself, its capabilities, its operating model, its internal processes, compared with focusing on the actual end-to-end change management results.
SPEAKER_00Ah, the dreaded navel gazing, admiring your own processes instead of looking at the impact in the real world.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. The function becomes too inward-looking. The mitigation is simple in concept, harder in practice. Constantly use the lessons learned, the good, the bad, the ugly, from actual change projects out in the business to strengthen the central function. The design has to reflect reality, not just theory.
SPEAKER_00Right. Keep it grounded. Mistake number four takes us back to lever three, the extended role.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Failing to use the enterprise function to play that leadership role pre and post-projects.
SPEAKER_00And a common example given was about project closure, right? Letting projects formally close right after go live before you know if adoption happened or if outcomes were achieved.
SPEAKER_01That's a big one, especially around budgeting. The mitigation here is about embedding a whole of life view into project management. And one powerful way to do that is to introduce the idea of two closes for a project.
SPEAKER_00Two closes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The first close might be the traditional end of warranty. The system is stable, the technical delivery is done. But the second, arguably more important close is the end of benefits realization.
SPEAKER_00Ah, when you can actually prove that people have adopted the change and the business value has been achieved.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It forces that accountability to continue after Go Live, keeping the focus on the ultimate outcome, not just the initial deployment.
SPEAKER_00Very smart. Okay. Okay, mistake number five.
SPEAKER_01Inconsistent talent management and resourcing, high turnover, big variations in skill levels among your change practitioners.
SPEAKER_00I'd imagine that undermines the whole consistency argument for having the function in the first place.
SPEAKER_01Totally. The mitigation involves several things setting clear, reasonable targets for the mix of experience levels you need, establishing proper career paths within change management so people can see a future, and building a strong shared culture with agreed competencies and shared learning practices. Turn your people into knowledge carriers, not just interchangeable resources. Failing to put in place the critical practices that actually enable quality and consistency. You can have the best framework in the world.
SPEAKER_00But if nobody actually follows it or follows it well, it's useless.
SPEAKER_01This is about governance and making the standard stick. Mitigation means setting really clear expectations from day one, ensuring every new person gets effective onboarding, implementing sensible checks and balances, like peer reviews or quality gates, and importantly, recognizing and rewarding the right behaviours and practices while also being willing to address poor performance.
SPEAKER_00Walk the talk, essentially. Okay, that brings us to the final mistake, number seven.
SPEAKER_01Right, and this one sets up a really interesting point. Mistake seven is failing to bridge business units on stakeholder expectations. This is particularly tricky in big transformations that cut across multiple parts of the organization, maybe with different sponsors, where everyone has a slightly different idea of what success looks like or what the priorities are.
SPEAKER_00Okay, different stakeholders potentially pulling in different directions, but it's an important role for change to play when a project relies on multiple departments. Now, there's a few mitigations, but I'll focus on one. It involves standardizing how you manage influence early in the process.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Temri highlighted using Seven Consultings, project success sliders.
SPEAKER_01Project success sliders? Tell me more.
SPEAKER_00It's a tool used early, typically at the business case phase. It enables the project sponsor and stakeholders to actively discuss and document their relative priorities. So we're talking about things like scope versus time versus budget versus quality versus adoption. They have to make trade-offs and agree on the level of influence each factor has.
SPEAKER_01So it surfaces those hidden assumptions and potential conflicts right at the beginning before they derail the project later on.
SPEAKER_00That's exactly the idea. It makes explicit those often political trade-offs about what success truly means for this specific initiative.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. That sounds like a powerful tool for managing those tricky stakeholder dynamics.
SPEAKER_00It certainly does.
SPEAKER_01Well, this has been incredibly insightful. We've covered a sample of the different types of structures of a change function, the four critical levers you need to manage, the operating model, funding model, the extended role and services, tools and framework, and crucially, those seven common pitfalls to avoid along with mitigations.
SPEAKER_00And the big takeaway, I think, is that deliberately building this capability isn't just a nice to have. It's about protecting your organization's significant investments in its projects and driving genuinely consistent and ultimately improved results from change. The effort up front really does pay off.
SPEAKER_01And look, if these concepts resonate with you, if you're thinking about your own program delivery, PMO, or change management challenges, we really encourage you to get in touch with us here at Seven Consulting. You can find us easily via our website, sevenconsulting.com or on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_00Please do reach out. We are committed to sharing our unique, innovative ideas like these, techniques that go beyond the standard project or change management textbooks. We're releasing a new podcast like this every two weeks. So please make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out.
SPEAKER_01We are indeed. Now this conversation has laid some excellent groundwork, and that project success sliders tool sounds fascinating. So next time on the delivery playbook, we're going to dive much deeper into that specific tool.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we'll explore how the project success sliders can really help revolutionize the way your organization clarifies and manages those critical sponsor and stakeholder expectations right from the start in the business case phase. It's a really practical session.
SPEAKER_01Definitely one not to miss. We look forward to having you join us again soon.