Why it helps to have experience, and why it doesn’t
Knowing the business you are in is, of course, important. Having change management support from someone who also knows the business means it’s easy to short cut to the point, not much time is needed to learn it all, and you’re less likely to miss something.
I learnt how to manage changes in an environment I knew well, operationally. It helped. In finding out that I was deeply interested in both understanding how different operations work and then how to make changes to them , I discovered that having fresh eyes on something helps too.
When you work on something you know, you can become focused on its delivery without looking it from other’s perspectives. Coming into a project or organisation with fresh eyes makes it easier to view the changes from the perspective of those on the receiving end.
Whether you have the experience or not, being able to look at changes from the outside provides an essential understanding if the impacts are to be understood and communicated effectively, taking the audience’s needs into account.
Understanding the impacts from the outside can also help develop the changes being delivered - it’s better to find out something won’t work and why before it’s been completed. Negotiating changes and the acceptance of any impacts is a core part of any Change Manager’s role.