Nerve-racking as it may be, change is essential to progress and the way in which organisations go about implementing it can determine whether their business succeeds or fails.

For James Spencer, the MCA’s Change Management Consultant of the Year, the human instinct to resist change is part of what makes his job worth doing. “People have comfort zones that they don’t want to be pushed out of,” says the 37-year-old senior consultant at IBM. “If that wasn’t the case, my job would be a lot easier.”

On one project, he had to get to grips with the needs of an energy company and its employees in 21 countries as its business was streamlined. “Its success was down to a mixture of science and art,” he says. “Change management has grown up a lot in past 20 years and I was able to use lots of tools and scientifically proven templates, but I tried to be creative and intuitive too.”

With a global team of 18 client and IBM staff and responsibility for deployment teams in each country, he says that “providing a clear framework for a team to operate in was crucial. You have to be able to articulate your ideas so everyone heads towards a common goal”.

Spencer studied psychology at university in New Zealand before joining IBM’s Global Business Services in 2004 as a senior managing consultant. “I’ve always been fascinated by how to get a group of people who all have different needs to work well together,” he says. The need to understand the human implications of organisational change is being recognised by more businesses. Change management is one of the fastest growing markets in the UK - it grew by 55% in 2007 and generated at least £260m last year.

Nevertheless, the industry does face challenges. “Change management has such a loose definition,” says Spencer. “People make their own assumptions about what it means. In a previous job, a colleague had to explain his role to a board in Japan. The members thought he’d been employed to literally change them and oversee their replacement.”

There could also be trouble ahead as a result of the economic downturn, warns Mike Bourne, professor of business performance at Cranfield School of Management. “Change managers may find they’ll be brought in as hatchet people.”

It’s a problem Spencer has already experienced. “Often I find we’re brought in too late,” he says. “My friends call me Mr Wolfe – after the character in Pulp Fiction who’s brought in to clean up the mess.”

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