Allison Grayson was an organizational change management enthusiast long before mainstream business culture had an inkling of its impact. She gets totally fired up about organizational structure and team effectiveness, training, and development—areas of expertise she began refining while earning her master’s degree in industrial organizational psychology.
20 years in the consulting trenches with large organizations produced powerful results improving both customer loyalty and employee engagement. Research- and data-based, she spearheaded what came to be known as organizational change management.
“Organizational change management is the make-or-break factor in a project’s success,” Grayson says. “If the organization isn’t ready to use the new tool or process to its full purpose, they’re not going to get the benefit out of it. Adoption is crucial.”
Grayson joined the Resultant team in January 2020 as a senior consultant and dove into meeting client-facing responsibilities while working behind the scenes to define and develop organizational change management as a discrete service, crafting how we could effectively deliver it to our clients. She built the team to do exactly that and since August 2021 has led it as the inaugural director of organizational change management.
Today, she leads a small but mighty team of five, tackling change management challenges from public- and private-sector clients. Proactively identifying risks, resistance, and obstacles to project adoption are team superpowers that drive value delivery to clients.
“Sponsorship is the most critical component of success,” Grayson says. “Without having someone in a leadership position to explain to the organization why, why now, and how it ties to strategy, the project either won’t get completed or won’t be adopted.” Grayson and her team enjoy propelling that process and seeing organizations reap the benefits.
Thoughtful collaboration is her favorite Resultant core value: “Success requires internal and external collaboration not only to the design of a project, but to how it’s going to impact a client’s business and how we can help set them up for success.”
Grayson notes that other Resultant departments are embracing organizational change management; collaboration among internal teams helps educate on change management and demonstrate its value.
I’m excited to see the changes in how organizational change management is perceived. When I started here, not everyone understood what change management was or why it was necessary; today, people not only understand it but are integrating it into how we position our work from the beginning.
– Allison Grayson, Director of Organizational Change Management, Resultant
The team even receives RFPs solely for change management services, which Grayson views as a huge win and recognition of the organizational change management skill set.
Grayson may be somewhat less than fully adjusted to her new status as the parent of a college freshman, but she’s pretty happy rooting on the sidelines at her younger son’s high school football games—or doing anything else outdoors: “So much of my time is in meetings, when I’m not working I’ll do literally anything besides sitting in front of a screen.” She and her husband have recently taken up pickleball but have yet to engage Resultant’s Blythe Wildridge in the pickleball throwdown we’re all waiting for.
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