Institute of Change Management: are you in it?

I got my login details this week for the Institute of Change Management; I was pleased that my membership has been approved.

To be honest, logging in to the Institute’s website as a member doesn’t give you much access to extra stuff.  There’s a forum, but the community is still growing so at the moment you don’t need to be a member to look round the website and see what it’s all about.

The good thing about signing up and becoming a member is that the Institute of Change Management (IoCM) is the only professional membership organisation in Europe dedicated to managers charged with organisational change.  Like us.  If your project doesn’t involve change then it’s not really a project.  The IoCM doesn’t focus on technology or construction or any other project management field: it’s about making change stick and leading the evolution of the change management profession through recognition of the particular skills and knowledge required by change management practitioners.  The idea is that the membership and community will grow, and the Institute will support individuals and organisations through educational programmes, expert consultancy, and access to the latest research and thinking.

The IoCM is based at the University of Brighton’s Business School and funded by the University’s Commercial Activation Fund.  It’s taken about four years research and development to get the Institute to this point.  It was the result of discussions with groups of alumni from the University’s MA Change Management Programme eager for their profession to be recognised on a national scale.  Given that there are only two other change management organisations in the world, they thought it was worth having a European-based organisation to champion and oversee the standards of change management.

The Institute launched in July last year, so in terms of professional bodies it is still new.  That explains why the website isn’t that developed in terms of resources for members. On top of that, it is free to join, so while they are building a membership base and interest the resources provided necessarily have to be relatively cheap, I’d imagine.

Still, there are huge benefits of being in an Institute like this at the ground level.  Members will be kept abreast of developments and as the membership group is smaller we’ll have the chance to network in a more effective way with the decision makers.  Change management itself isn’t new – Brighton’s MA course has been running for over ten years and is targeted at experienced managers wishing to further their skills.  That’s the kind of person that the IoCM will attract, so if that sounds like your kind of community, and you’re based in Europe, then sign up for membership now!

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