Impacted individuals

Impacted individuals are those people that will be directly affected in some way by the underlying project’s outcome. Typically, these people will be required to behave differently in their day-to-day activities and approach to fulfilling their role. Sometimes not merely a behaviour is impacted, requiring behaviour change as a function of the role filled, but an attitude has to change.

Impacted individuals can and will be from every level of the organization. Those we are most concerned with for the sake of project change management are in the lower ranks executing the work of the organization day-to-day. The reason for the focus on these layers is twofold. First, there are vastly more people that must make the change, the lower in the organization. Second, at or near the executive level, project change management is unlikely to have much effect—for political and strategic reasons.