County officials at the recent MACo Conference in Ocean City caught the wave of change management from two project management professionals – one a sitting councilman and the other an executive in the defense industry.

Steve Moore, VP, Strategy & Business Development at Orbital ATK Defense Group, described how project management tools include things that elected officials use everyday, such as budget, schedule, requirements, stakeholder analysis, and monitoring documentation. He spoke about risk management, and how to apply a four-quadrants approach to determine outcomes that are both of high likelihood and high impact, and devising active mitigation processes for them. He also framed the distinction between executive and legislative branch perspectives on project management.

Turning to the topic of change management, Howard Councilman Jon Weinstein (and President of Line of Sight management consulting) described the need for an organization to evaluate readiness and capacity for the change before beginning the change management process. He counseled against doing 3 or 4 major changes within an organization at the same time. He shared tools for change management including employee surveys, interactions, traditional and social media that allows an organization to communicate updates on the change and to gather feedback.

Senator Gail Bates of the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee moderated this panel discussion.