Organizations pay hundreds of thousands—without blinking—for project managers and large project teams to deliver:
Transformation.
New systems.
AI.
A new operating model.
But allocating a few percent of the budget so people actually adopt the change and use it? That’s… a problem.
Companies sometimes have a strange relationship with what they’re willing to pay for.
There’s always budget for the technical side of change:
milestones, timeline, budget, vendors, integrations, testing.
And then the human side of change shows up.
And suddenly you hear:
“We didn’t budget for that.”
“That’s the people part—we can cut it first.”
“The project manager can handle it.”
“HR will send the communication.”
“People will learn the new system as they go.”
Paradox? No. Reality.
Because you can’t tick “people” off as just another task in a project plan.
You either do the people work intentionally… or you pay for it later:
✨ in overtime and rework
✨ in silent resistance (and public cynicism)
✨ in shadow processes and workarounds
✨ in firefighting chaos after go-live that “no one expected”
✨ in losing key people because they’ve had enough
And this isn’t just my opinion.
Prosci shows that projects with excellent change management deliver nearly 1.5× more often on or under budget than projects with weak or no change management—so change management pays for itself.
McKinsey described in a study of 40 change programs that the most successful companies achieved an average 143% ROI, when change management was part of implementation—while companies failing across organizational levels achieved only 35% ROI.
Change management is not an extra cost.
It’s how you protect an investment that’s already in the budget.
How does your organization work with change management?