How to thrive when you're doing tasks or roles beyond the scope of Change Management

As a Changie, there’s many times when you’ll start to creep out of the bounds of “pure” Change Management into other realms, roles and responsibilities. If you’re an independent Change Management Consultant like me, you might charge different additional fees for these extras. But when you are a permanent or a day rate contractor, you are trading your time for money. They have hired you as this role. They're paying you to show up for those hours whether or not you have anything to do. I've certainly sat twiddling my thumbs for days on end as a perm or as a day rate contractor - they're paying you for your time and to be 100% available to them. 

It’s always your choice

Now saying that it's completely your choice as to what you do that's outside of the scope of a Change Manager. As an independent consultant, you'll choose what you want to do within your scope as a Change Manager and beyond. When you are a Change Manager internally, it's pretty good to actually provide the services of a Change Manager, all of the outputs and all of the outcomes. But if it's something beyond that, you really can make your own decisions.

How you’d “charge” 

So can you charge a different rate? It's probably not about charging a different rate. It'd probably be more negotiating a higher salary or day rate. You wouldn't be like, “Well, because you want me to do this thing, I'm going to charge you $200 a week extra.” You'd be like, “Oh, I can see you don't have this in your project and you are wanting me to actually do a bit of that. Can my day rate be $900 instead of $800 because I'm bringing this extra skillset?” You could potentially negotiate that, but usually the role itself will show you. 

For example, once I was on a Change Engagement Lead role. 50% of the role was Change Management, 50% of the role was Engagement. When my recruiter came to me with the opportunity, the role was already set as that with this split. And that's what you'll often see. You'll see a Change Comms role, a Change Learning and Development role, a Project Change role. All these slashie roles (see my previous blog post here). It's then your decision. Do you want to go for that role? As part of the interview, you could ask, “Hey, I can see that you are bringing in a new system and you're planning on changing a lot of the way that the business operates. Do you have a Process Analyst already hired?” And they might be like, “Oh no, we don't have a Process Analyst!” So you can suggest, “In my experience working on projects, process analysis is a really key part that is something within my skillset. Is that something that you'd like for me to do as part of the role?” And then if they were to say yes, you could potentially go and negotiate with them or with the recruiter to increase the salary or rate to compensate for that hybrid role.

Be clear it’s above and beyond

If you get into the project and you're like “Hang on a second, there's a role that's definitely missing here.” You could also just ask, “Do you want me to do that? Do you want me to step in and do it?” Just let them know that this is over and above what a normal Change Manager would do and you could just do it for free essentially because they are paying you for your time. It's up to you and your discretion around what you do and don't do. 

Influence to hire the right resources

You can also influence them to hire the right skillset so it doesn’t fall to you. The example I always use is one time, even though I’m not a Process Analyst, I did high level process mapping because I'd once watched somebody else do it and took a stab at it. Then the project saw how valuable that light mapping was and hired a full-time Process Analyst. She was busy ALL THE TIME, doing detailed process mapping, doing all the testing, pulling the screenshots for the training. It was me giving a little bit to the project beyond my scope to influence them to hire that proper resource in. 

Set boundaries at the beginning

It's really up to you and it's also up to you to ask the right questions in the interview. Maybe you don't want to write any communications - a very traditional way of viewing Change Management for those who have done Change accreditations. Don’t accept the role! I would say in today's day and age, they're looking for people who will come in and deliver. They're looking for people who will come in and do whatever is needed to get to the end result. And that's how I always approach change. I'm always like, “Whatever you need to get to success, I will jump in and do,” but I will let them know that it's not normal. I don't mind writing comms. It gives me a lot of control over the messaging of the change. I literally did Media and Communications at university. I like writing comms but it’s the review process that sucks. I’m okay to do that. I'd actually sometimes rather do that than have the Comms person, who's sometimes rubbish, writing them. It's really up to you to ask the right questions in the interview. If you see a gap and they agree that that is a gap in the project and you've got the skillset and you want to do it, you might be able to increase your salary or your rate as a hybrid so they don't have to hire another person. I was beloved on projects not because of what I did, but also my style and the quality with which I did it. There were other people who weren't because they were so hands off, they were very theoretic Change Managers. Then the projects would go, “Please can we have Lata back? We don't want to pay for this resource who's doing nothing for us. Please can we have Lata back?”

So these are some ideas to keep thriving even if you’re doing tasks or roles beyond the traditional “scope” of Change Management. The long story short is that you can be more selective about what you would do and don't do when you move to consulting where you really are charging premium rates and say, “Yep, I'll write comms for you. I'm going to charge you more if you want me to do the delivery of comms.”

Lata xx

P.S. If you’d like to grow your confidence to lead change end-to-end and earn your worth, here’s 6 ways I can help:

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