As we navigate change during these times of moving targets, many among us turn to some of the change management tools for inspiration.

From my interaction with my fellow colleagues over the past month, many projects managers adopt the change management mode in full or in part.

While the process is multi-faceted and our learning is specific to projects we currently manage, I noticed five main common take-aways:

1. The success of change management will depend on how prepared you were. You’ll be grateful if you have no delays, backlog and no red signals on the critical paths.

2. Change management will rely on the same project’s resources, or even less resources. Donors and sponsor will not give to on-going projects any additional funds. You might find yourself finding creating ways of doing change management with no or very little funds. You might want to join forces with other projects to share the costs.

3. For internal projects, depending on the organisation’s policy and the labour legislation of the country where the project is located, the project manager might face the challenge of team’s downsizing and, consequently, the reallocation of roles and responsibilities.

4. As a project manager, you’ll be now more than ever grateful for the communication trainings you took and tips you learned along your path. The success of the change management depends vitally on timely, clear, empathic and honest communication so that everyone feels that we all in this together.

5. You’ll learn that acceptance of change will happen differently. If before we tended to engage in endless discussions and find excuses to introducing (or not) change, acceptance will happen quicker. This in turn, places much of the responsibility on those who lead the change management.