It is 2022 and a year ago most of us were praying for the end of Covid so that we can move back to ‘normal’. One year on, here we are again. Covid disruptions are even more severe and widespread. Not only are we still amidst continuous business disruptions compared to a year ago, but probably even more severe.
We see lots of memes around social media of people wanting to forget the past year with the difficulty of life caused by Covid. And a year ago it was the same. What we are learning is that change and disruption will not be going away any time soon. The only thing we can do to support our organisations is to continue to build change agility. With better change agility, organizations are better able to respond to constant and continuous change.
The big positive for change managers is more than ever, change is now the centre of attention for businesses. In the past, many would struggle to position management conversations about the importance of managing and leading change. That is no longer the case. Even the most backward and change immature businesses are thrust into the midst of constant change. We no longer need to raise this as a topic of focus.
This means now is the opportune time to utilise the focus on change to gear up the organisation’s readiness and capability to respond to the constant change in the longer term. More than ever now is the time to pitch to your organisation about the importance of building the right ‘change agility muscles’ so that the organisations can remain competitive and in business.
What are the benefits of agile organisations?
We can see quite stark examples of organisations that are agile versus those that are not. Businesses that jumped on web offerings have benefited significantly versus those that have relied purely on brick-and-mortar channels. Other businesses have diversified their offering whilst others have reduced their store footprint.
Mckinsey studies have shown that with successful agile transformations, organisations can achieve significant business improvements. Not just surviving, successful companies have achieved 30% better customer satisfaction, 30% improvement in operational performance, 5-10 times speed in driving change and decision making and ranking higher in innovation compared to peers. These organisations are also 30% better at engaging employees and 30% more efficient in their operations through fewer handovers, and reduced overhead with clear focus areas.
However, as a change manager, how can you move the dial on improving your organisation’s agility for change? As a solitary individual how does one person influence an organisation? This is especially when you may not have the decision-making authority or the power? As a change manager, you have your project work defined. How can you do this without boiling the ocean which may not be part of your bread-and-butter role?
These are 5 ways to improve your organisation’s agility as a change manager:
1. Influence your project sponsor and business owner to lead agility.
A part of the change manager’s role is to help influence and equip stakeholders with the right skills to drive the change. This starts with your own project. As a project, assess the skills of your project sponsor and business owner. Do they have the experience and skills to lead agility practices as a part of overall change leadership?
These may include:
Ability to spot changing and emerging trends that may impact the organisation’s business
Balance the oversight of immediate daily operational trends and insights, against longer-term and more strategic patterns and trends that may emerge
Ability to work across disciplines in influencing change
Promotion and advocacy of constant experimentation and testing of new ideas and concepts, supporting experimental failures as they arise
Lead behaviours that support organisational learning, whether it’s learning from within the industry outside the industry, using historical data, or through innovation incubation teams
Savviness with shifting technological trends and use cases that could implicate the business
Work with your sponsor and business owner and help to identify key required agility leadership behaviours. Partner with them and coach as necessary to support these behaviours. Collaborate and come up with a skills development plan if necessary.
2. Embed agility practices within the implementation of your project.
To support business agility the first step from a project perspective is to ask how the project benefits can be protected and sustained even in times of constant disruption and uncertainty. Asking this question is the first step to take. Simply asking this may help you re-shape the project’s approach in its implementation and the work involved.
Some of the ways in which you can design agility into your project include:
Designing flexible role and team structures where appropriate to ensure that any workload or role changes can be easily flexed and catered for in case of future changes
Designing the right skills and competency requirements into business roles as a part of role requirements, including agile leadership, experimentation, work approach flexibility, and reporting/data fluency
Building agile business rhythms and routines into business readiness and future end-state designs. These may include stand-ups, business scanning and review practices, and agile iteration practices
Work closely with your business representatives and subject matter experts within your project and leverage them as anchors for agility practices into the business
Leverage your pilots as agility experiments in designing agility components into your change implementation. For example, use the pilot as a test from which to build agility components so as to further change agility in the rest of the project roll out
3. Proactively participate in the change centre of excellence, or if this does not exist, build a change network with other change managers and interested business representatives
Leverage the power of other change practitioners in other projects and across the business to collaborate and build a common approach to further change agility in the business. Work with others to come up with ways to influence the business and build practices that will help the business strive in times of disruption and change. Don’t underestimate the power of like-minded representatives across the business. Each representative acts as an influencing node from which powerful tactics and practices can be driven into the business.
Work across projects to build one view of change impacts. By building this integrated view of change impacts across multiple projects, you are also helping the business connect the dots and build an integrated way of getting ready for all changes, not just yours. An integrated view of change can help you:
See a holistic picture of what is going to change
Prepare the business for what is going to change across the board, and this is made easier by knowing what will be changing
Utilise the changes in the roadmap to design a series of agility tests to prepare the business for challenges further down the track in the roadmap
4. Liberalising data and support swift decision making
Historically, in hierarchical companies data is usually restricted to select managers. With digitisation there is an opportunity to give power to a much larger number of employees to access data and through this be more aware of the changing needs of the company. Liberalising data to make faster and better decisions is one of the key trends of digitisation. This is also a key enabler for change agility. With easier data access for a greater number of employees, decisions can be made by those who are most familiar with the work context, in a timely fashion. This ease of data access means that someone does not need to wait for rounds of approvals to make decisions.
This also applies to change data. Rather than restricting the access of change impact data to a select few managers, liberalising this across a larger number of managers and team leaders can help to paint a clearer picture of change and help equip the business’ readiness for change.
The ease of acess to data does not just mean the raw data itself, but ease also implies the ease of understanding the format of the data. Pre-configured data visualisation and charts are valuable since the user will not need to go through long training sessions in order to use the data. By making the data easily understood and make sense, the business can then balance forecasted change against impending change disruptions that may not be forecasted.
5. Conduct change scenario planning
Scenario planning is an exercise where a facilitated team reviews the existing operations and the external business environment to try and forecast differing business scenarios. Scenarios are then used to build the right tracking signals. The business may have already built safeguards toward this scenario, or a clear set of next steps in which to deal with the progress toward this scenario.
Not a lot of projects conduct scenario planning, as scenario planning is typically conducted by strategy and planning functions. However, undertaking scenario planning can help build in the right rail guards to safeguard against different scenarios before they emerge.
Work with your project team and business stakeholders to undergo an annual scenario planning exercise in which to prepare the business for various environmental disruptions and challenges. Scenario planning does not need to be a long, formal, drawn-out process. It could be as simple as spending a day exploring what the future holds, having done the homework to prepare for what the data could be telling us. After identifying various scenarios, ensure you name each scenario, with a meaningful analogy if needed so that it’s more meaningful and easier to remember for the team.
You can also put in practice scenario planning on a smaller scale. Within certain junctures of the project, you can build in mini-scenarios of the various change outcomes that may occur, and build in the right tracking metrics and reporting to see which scenario is emerging.
You can also use scenario planning to work through multiple changes across the projects and change landscape. Use similar concepts to work-through options in sequencing and prioritisation and what this means to change implementation timelines and tactics. For example, are there ways in which implementation may be combined across projects? Or can releases be broken down into smaller change bites to aid adoption and cater to limited business capacity?
There are many ways in which you as a singular change manager can influence and drive significant agility changes within your organisation. Here we outline 5 major ways in which you can do this. Since disruption and ongoing change are not going away, this is the opportune time for change practitioners to grab this window of opportunity and work with the business to develop and design change agile organisations. Not only will your project have a significantly better chance of realising its targeted benefits, but so will other projects in the pipeline.
Often we hear change practitioners call out the challenges of working with organisations that are not change mature. Yes it is easier for change practitioners to work within organisations that are more mature in managing change. This means that the change concepts and approaches are easily understood and adopted. This also means that you don’t need to spend a lot of time covering the foundational approaches of change before driving project results.
When organisations are less change mature, change practitioners need to do a lot more level setting work to explain their role, and foundational change management concepts. For example, the importance of engagement and authenticity, and getting feedback from stakeholder groups prior to change implementation.
Structured communication and learning channels may need to be setup. Without these being established, messages may not be flowing between the targeted stakeholder groups.
However, every organisation is in a different continuum in their development of their change maturity. How do we work with organisations that simply do not have in place a lot of the foundational capabilities of managing change?
Frame everything as a part of general business management
15 years ago when I was at Intel there was no change management function per se. There were also no dedicated change management professionals. What we know now as change management was covered under the work of Project Managers and the Human Resources Organizational Development function. Most managers were not familiar with change management concepts or applications.
However, from a learning and development perspective what Intel did well was to integrate managing change concepts within general management skills. All levels of management development included a component of managing change. After all, this is an organisation in a fast-changing hi-tech environment where change is a normal part of how the industry evolves.
In particular, first-line manager, second-line manager as well as senior manager development programs all had general management components. Everything ranging from setting clear goals and expectations, communicating clearly, asking for and receiving feedback, driving for results, supporting and developing the team, were all foundational parts of managerial development. As a result, the organisation is quite used to ongoing changes either operational, structural or strategic ones.
The point here is that in order to drive successful change, it may not be necessary to have a dedicated change function nor formalised change management development programs. Change management is a part of general management, just like human resources or operations management.
The challenge for the change practitioner is to diagnose which parts of the fabric of the organisation is not change mature, and therefore could become potential obstacles for successful change process implementation. These may include:
The ability of targeted leaders in leading change successfully (judging by previous change history)
The ability of impacted stakeholder groups including employees in trusting leaders in undergoing the change process
The existence of various learning and engagement platforms and processes from which change implementation may leverage throughout the initiative
Experience in undergoing change initiatives that follow a structured rigour where stakeholder consultation, ongoing tracking of results, and discipline in execution are adhered to
Planning capability in engaging stakeholders using clear fact-based visualisation of impact activities and using this to balance and sequence overall business capacity
After identifying those elements that could potentially impede the successful execution and adoption of change, the next task is to ‘frame’ your work around improving business processes and capabilities to support initiative success. And the trick of doing this well in change immature organisations is to frame it without using change concepts or jargon.
As hard as it may seem, some of the terms you may want to avoid include:
change leadership capability
burning platform
change champions
change vision
change approach/strategy
change readiness
I know! This sounds like an impossible feat not to use standard change jargon and concepts. However, this is the key to engaging with organisations that are less change mature. Instead of change-specific language, try using general business terms instead. These are some examples:
Instead of change leadership capability, leader behaviours required
Instead of burning platform, articulating the clear reasons for the change
Instead of change champions, business unit initiative reps
Instead of change vision, initiative end-state
Instead of change approach/strategy, leading our people through the initiative
Instead of change readiness, implementation or initiative readiness
Framing change concepts into general business speak
In framing your change approach and plan and ‘translating’ this into business-speak. There are 2 key levels to focus on.
1. Strategic
This is about cutting through to the core of why we are changing and how the change helps to meet a particular strategic goal. For low change mature stakeholders, this needs to be as basic as possible. So, none of the lofty elevator pitches that your corporate communications person has carefully crafted. But, a lay-man wording of why the change is needed and how this helps the organisation.
2. Operational
This is one of the most critical parts of dissecting the change. It is about breaking down your change approach into the various elements that impact the operations of the business. It is laying out the operational activities that are being planned to drive stakeholders through the change process. For example,
What process changes will mean for the frontline consultant, in terms of work steps, bandwidth, reporting, collaboration, work focus areas, etc.
What technology changes will team for team work in terms of who does work, the frequency of exchanges, the speed and process of decision making, audit tracing,
Frame change activities as a part of project steps
Another challenge in working with less change mature organisations is positioning project change implementation activities in a way that resonates and make sense. To make things simple for the business, try and use as least jargon as possible and explain the ‘why’ and purpose of each activity.
Here are some examples.
Change impact assessment -> Why is this needed?
The assessment defines in detail what is changing and how this affects different parts of the organisation, whether is people, process, customer, technology, etc.
How to use it? After understanding in detail what is changing, this then helps us plan out how to engage the impacted groups of people, and it also helps us to determine how to give them the right skills and support
Stakeholder matrix -> Why is this needed?
This breaks down which groups of people by business unit, function, team, role, in terms of how we plan to engage with them, using what engagement channels, and how critical or influential they are to the success of the project.
How to use it? The information on the groups of people impacted by this project determines those we engage with and how we engage with them. It also determines those we need to support with the right skills and know-how. Having the right information of those impacted means that we don’t miss groups of people that we should be engaging with.
It starts with one – finding the first sponsor/champion
Even if less mature organisations there will be managers who ‘get’ what you are trying to do in driving change. They may not know the terminology, the concepts nor the ways to measure change effectiveness. However, experienced managers should intuitively understand the importance of engagement, measurement, setting clear goals and expectations, skills, and capabilities.
When you start to work your way around the organisations you should come across them. They can help to either ‘sponsor’ your project if they are in the right position and their role has the influencing power over your project. He/She may not be the ‘project sponsor’, instead, a political sponsor who is influential enough to create clout to drive movement in the change process.
You may also come across various potential ‘champions’ who are passionate, positive about the change, and diligent enough that you can work with to channel change energy into the various stakeholder groups. These champions may be frontline level, first-line manager, or senior managers.
Remember, any change starts with one person. One by one, the change takes shape and the influence takes place through each interaction and each engagement. Even if you can only have a small number of champions, you will be amazed at the results you can achieve through the dedication of the few.
Use data to tell stories
Even in less change mature organisations, managers use manage to manage the business. This means, if you can gather the right change data to tell the story of how the initiative may pan out across the business, you can easily communicate and influence the business. Especially in less change mature businesses, data is absolutely key.
What are some of the ways in which change data can help to crystalise the importance of change tactics and approaches?
Examples of data visualisation from The Change Compass
Change impact data can tell a visual and influential story of what is going to happen to the organisation. For example:
Which parts of the organisation are more impacted? What roles? What are the relative sizes of impact?
How much time is required for particular roles as part of change implementation activities throughout the implementation phase?
What’s the timing of implementation activities and how do these overlap with other project activities or operational priorities?
Scenarios of implementation roadmap including potential risks and benefits of alternative scenarios
Other data can be used to tell stories of the progress of the project include, change readiness assessment results, training completion rates, training session satisfaction feedback, stakeholder readership of knowledge article pages, and attendance and engagement level at briefing or town hall sessions.
Data-driven change management: why methodology alone is no longer enough
For the first twenty years of change management as a discipline, the primary question practitioners wrestled with was methodological: how do you follow the right sequence of steps to prepare people for change? The frameworks that emerged from that era, Kotter’s eight steps, Prosci’s ADKAR model, McKinsey’s influence model, were responses to a genuine gap. Most organisations had no structured approach to the people side of transformation at all.
That gap has largely closed. Most large organisations now have a change methodology. Many have multiple. The question that is keeping enterprise change leaders up at night in 2026 is not whether they have a methodology. It is whether they have the data to apply it intelligently.
Data-driven change management is not a rejection of methodology. It is the layer above it: the capability to determine where to focus the methodology, at what intensity, for which groups, and at what point in the change journey. Without that data layer, even the most sophisticated change methodology is applied with the same rough instrument to every situation, a guaranteed recipe for wasted effort and missed risk.
What methodology-only change management gets wrong
A methodology gives change practitioners a process to follow. It tells them what to do. Data tells them where, when, and how much. Without data, practitioners are making three critical assumptions that are rarely examined:
Assumption 1: All affected groups are equally at risk. Most change management plans allocate support resources proportionally to the number of people affected by a programme, rather than to the groups where adoption risk is highest. Without data on which groups face the steepest behaviour change, the most significant system transition, or the highest concurrent change load, this is the only allocation logic available.
Assumption 2: Readiness can be assessed by activity completion. The dominant measure of readiness in methodology-driven change management is whether change activities have been completed: training sessions delivered, communications sent, awareness workshops run. This tells you what the change team has done. It does not tell you whether the people receiving those activities are actually ready to perform differently.
Assumption 3: Problems will become visible quickly enough to respond. In a methodology-only model, problems typically surface when adoption starts to fail: after go-live, when the business begins to notice that new processes are not being followed or systems are not being used as designed. By that point, the cost of intervention is substantially higher than if the risk had been visible three months earlier.
A 2024 analysis of change management outcomes published by Deloitte found that organisations using data to guide their change strategy consistently outperform those relying on methodology alone, particularly on adoption speed and sustained behaviour change. The differential is not because data-driven organisations use better methodologies. It is because they apply their methodology more precisely.
What data-driven change management actually means
Data-driven change management is the practice of using systematically collected and analysed data to inform change strategy, prioritise change management effort, and monitor change outcomes in real time.
The phrase is widely used and frequently misunderstood. Having a stakeholder assessment spreadsheet is not data-driven change management. Sending a post-training survey with a satisfaction score is not data-driven change management. What distinguishes genuinely data-driven practice from these activities is the following:
The data is collected consistently using standardised instruments, not ad hoc
The data is aggregated across the portfolio, not siloed at the programme level
The data is used to make decisions, not just to report on activity
The data is analysed to surface patterns and risks, not just compiled into summaries
This distinction matters because many change functions believe they are data-driven because they produce reports. Reports are an output of data collection. Data-driven change management is about whether those reports change what happens next: whether they shift priorities, redirect resources, or trigger governance conversations about sequencing and scope.
The data types that matter most in change management
Not all change data is equally valuable. Understanding the data types that most reliably predict change outcomes helps change functions invest their measurement effort where it counts.
Impact and load data
The starting point of data-driven change management is an accurate, up-to-date picture of the change landscape: which groups are affected by which programmes, how significantly, and across which dimensions of change (process, system, role, behaviour, environment). This impact data is the raw material for everything else.
When impact data is aggregated across the portfolio, it becomes load data: the cumulative change demand on each stakeholder group at any point in time. Load data is the single most important predictor of saturation risk and the foundation of intelligent resource allocation. Without it, programme teams operate in isolation, each unaware of what other programmes are simultaneously asking of the same people.
Readiness data
Readiness data measures whether affected groups are prepared to perform differently when change lands. Useful readiness data goes beyond satisfaction with training. It assesses role-specific confidence in performing new tasks, manager preparedness to support their teams through the transition, and leadership alignment on the purpose and expectations of the change.
Readiness data is most valuable when it is collected early enough to act on. Readiness surveys completed two weeks before go-live are informational. Readiness data collected eight weeks before go-live, with a clear threshold below which intervention is triggered, is operational.
Adoption data
Adoption data measures whether change is actually sticking after go-live. For system changes, this typically includes usage metrics from the technology platform. For process changes, it includes adherence rates and quality indicators. For behaviour and cultural changes, it includes manager observations and pulse survey data.
McKinsey’s research on organisational agility identifies sustained adoption as the point at which change value is actually realised. Programmes that achieve technical go-live but fail to embed new behaviours do not deliver their projected benefits, regardless of how well the methodology was executed.
Sentiment and leading indicator data
Sentiment data fills the gap between structured survey cycles: real-time signals from employee feedback, manager escalations, support ticket categories, and participation rates in change activities. These leading indicators flag emerging problems before they show up in adoption metrics.
The value of sentiment data is in its speed. A spike in employee queries about a particular new process can indicate confusion that, if addressed within days, can be resolved before it becomes a pattern of non-adoption.
The difference data makes to change decisions
The practical impact of data-driven change management shows up in specific decisions that cannot be made well without it.
Resource allocation decisions. Without data, change management resources are typically allocated by programme size or budget. With load and readiness data, they can be directed to the groups where the risk is highest: the teams facing two major system transitions simultaneously, the business unit whose readiness scores have fallen three survey cycles in a row, the manager cohort that has not yet engaged with the change process at all.
Sequencing and timing decisions. Programme go-live dates are typically set by technology readiness, budget cycles, and executive preferences. Data on cumulative change load gives portfolio governance the evidence to make sequencing decisions on behalf of employee capacity, not just delivery convenience. This is the intervention that most directly prevents saturation.
Scope decisions. When data shows that a particular group is already at high saturation risk, the case for phasing the scope of a change landing on them, releasing essential changes first and adding complexity in subsequent phases, becomes objectively demonstrable rather than a judgement call that programme teams can dismiss.
Intervention targeting. Adoption data disaggregated by group, role, and geography identifies not just whether adoption is below target but exactly where. A targeted intervention for a specific team in a specific site is far more efficient than a blanket reinforcement campaign rolled out across the entire programme population.
Executive conversations. Change management has historically struggled to hold its ground in governance conversations with executives who are focused on schedule and cost. Data changes this. A change leader who can show a saturation risk score for a business unit, supported by load analysis and readiness trend data, is having a fundamentally different conversation than one who is making a subjective argument about “too much change.”
Building the data infrastructure for data-driven change management
The shift to data-driven change management requires more than a new mindset. It requires an infrastructure that makes consistent data collection and aggregation practical at scale.
The three components of that infrastructure are:
Standardised data collection tools. Every programme change impact assessment, readiness survey, and adoption tracking instrument needs to collect data in a consistent format. Without standardisation, aggregation is impossible. This is a foundational investment that pays dividends every time a new programme is launched.
A centralised data platform. Change data that lives in individual programme folders cannot be aggregated or analysed at the portfolio level. A shared platform where programme-level data flows into a portfolio view is the difference between a change function that can see the whole system and one that is working in the dark.
Analytical capacity within the change function. Data is only valuable when someone can analyse it and translate the analysis into recommendations. Dedicated change analyst roles, separate from programme delivery, are the emerging solution in enterprise change functions that have reached this level of maturity.
Research on data-driven enterprise capability from McKinsey finds that organisations with genuine data-driven capability in their operational functions are 23 times more likely to acquire customers and six times more likely to retain them than their peers. The same underlying capability differential applies within the change function: data-driven change management does not just produce better reports. It produces better outcomes.
Why data-driven change management is a competitive differentiator
The organisations that have invested in data-driven change management are building a capability that compounds over time. Each programme generates data that improves the accuracy of future impact assessments. Each adoption cycle produces evidence that refines the relationship between change load, intervention intensity, and outcome. Each saturation risk assessment that leads to a sequencing decision builds the political capital to make the next one.
This is the compounding advantage that methodology alone cannot replicate. A change methodology is a static set of steps. A data-driven change function is a learning system that becomes more precise with every programme it runs.
The implications for enterprise change functions are significant. Organisations investing in data-driven change capability now will be able to manage increasingly complex transformation portfolios with more confidence, less waste, and better outcomes than organisations that are still relying on methodological frameworks as their primary instrument.
For change leaders making the case for this investment to CFOs and CHROs, the business argument is straightforward. Prosci research on the correlation between change management and project success consistently shows that projects with excellent change management are six times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management. Data-driven change management is what makes the difference between good change management intentions and excellent change management outcomes.
How The Change Compass supports data-driven change management
Purpose-built platforms are what make data-driven change management practical at enterprise scale. Change Compass provides the data infrastructure that enterprise change functions need to aggregate impact data across the portfolio, visualise cumulative change load by stakeholder group, track readiness and adoption metrics in real time, and generate the executive reporting that keeps saturation risk visible to governance.
The platform is designed specifically for the challenge that methodology-only change management cannot address: seeing the whole portfolio at once, across all programmes, for all affected groups, in a format that drives decisions rather than just documents activity. The Change Automator extends this with workflow automation that reduces the manual overhead of keeping portfolio data current.
For change functions at the beginning of the data-driven journey, the weekly demo provides a practical demonstration of what portfolio-level change analytics looks like in a live environment.
The shift that actually changes outcomes
Methodology got the change management discipline to where it is. Data will take it where it needs to go.
The organisations that will manage the increasing pace and complexity of enterprise transformation over the next decade are those that have built the capability to use data to direct their change effort with precision: to see where risk is building before it becomes a crisis, to allocate resources based on evidence rather than assumption, and to demonstrate outcomes in the language that boards and executive teams can act on.
The shift from methodology-driven to data-driven change management is not a replacement. It is an evolution. The methodology still matters. But without data to guide its application, it will continue to produce the uneven, unpredictable outcomes that have made change management a challenging discipline to resource and justify.
Frequently asked questions
What is data-driven change management?
Data-driven change management is the practice of using systematically collected and analysed data to direct change strategy, allocate change management resources, and monitor change outcomes in real time. It goes beyond activity completion tracking to measure where adoption risk is highest, which groups are approaching saturation, and where readiness is falling short of the threshold needed for successful go-live.
How is data-driven change management different from traditional change management?
Traditional or methodology-driven change management follows a defined process regardless of the specific risk profile of the change and the affected groups. Data-driven change management uses impact, readiness, and adoption data to apply the methodology precisely: directing resources to the highest-risk groups, timing interventions based on leading indicator signals, and making sequencing and scope decisions based on evidence of employee capacity.
What data should change management functions be collecting?
The most valuable data types are: change impact and load data (which groups are affected, how significantly, across how many concurrent programmes), readiness data (whether groups are prepared to perform differently before go-live), adoption data (whether changes are sticking after go-live), and sentiment and leading indicator data (real-time signals of emerging risk between formal survey cycles).
What tools do you need for data-driven change management?
The foundational tools are standardised data collection templates applied consistently across all programmes, a shared data platform that enables portfolio-level aggregation, and visualisation tools that present cumulative change load and adoption trends in an executive-ready format. Purpose-built platforms like Change Compass are designed specifically to provide this infrastructure without requiring change functions to build it from scratch.
How does data-driven change management improve adoption outcomes?
By identifying where adoption risk is highest before go-live, data-driven change management enables earlier, more targeted intervention. Rather than deploying a uniform support programme across all affected employees, change resources are directed to the groups that data shows are least ready, most saturated, or falling furthest behind on adoption trajectory. This precision reduces both waste and missed risk.
Data is king. This is especially in current times of uncertainty. With data comes power, influence and outcomes. Lots of disciplines have leveraged the power of data to drive better outcomes. Marketers would not dream of doing any part of their job without data. Operations is driven by data in all aspects of managing the business. Even Human Resources is heavily focused on numbers, pay and benefits, employee sizes and structures, cultural measurements and employee sentiment trends.
For change management data must also be the core pillar that drives our work.
Unfortunately for a lot of practitioners the only data used tends to be sizing number of people impacted, counting the number of people being trained, training evaluation scores or change readiness sentiment surveys.
Surely, there is more we can do to adopt a more data-driven change approach?
Absolutely! Stay tuned for our upcoming article on how to do this.
In the meantime, here is an infographic on painting a picture of what a data-driven change environment looks like.
There are 8 core components:
Focus on capturing initiative and portoflio-wide data
Data-driven change approach throughout project phases
Take user/business centric versus project centric view
Investing in data insight capability building
Leader sponsorhip in data-led investment and focus
Collaboration/Openness to share data
Using data in routine business/project meetings
Incorporate data governance within roles and responsibilities
The past 1.5 years has been super challenging for most organisations. The constant stop and start interruptions of Covid has taken a toll on most employees. One minute we are going back to work the next minute we are not. One minute we have Covid cases under control, the next minute infection rates are out of control.
However, corporate initiatives are not in any way slowed down by Covid. If anything there is more organisational change resulting from Covid. Covid has not only resulted in ways of working changes, but also deep industry, economy, consumer and technology changes.
Now that most economies are starting to come out of lockdowns and opening up, what does this mean for initiatives? Well, amidst the atmosphere of the emotional and psycho-social turmoil that has been the journey for most employees as a result of COVID, the most important change approach can be summarised by one word ….
OPTIMISM
Why is it important to incorporate a sense of optimism within every change initiative?
After more than a year of being isolated and experiencing the various disruptions of not being able to have a normal life of shopping, visiting friends and travelling, we need to acknowledge and reset the mood. How we approach work is indeed affected by the overall mood around us. Resetting the mood and instilling a sense of positivity and optimism is absolutely critical.
Without optimism, employees may still be harbouring the lingering mood of dealing with Covid. Negativity will never help to transition people during the change process. It is hope and optimism that will carry energy and excitement which will then drive action.
Think of the last time you were feeling down and weary. What were some of your behaviours? Typical behaviours when you’re feeling down in the dumps include not connecting with family and friends, being socially withdrawn, disruptions in sleep, being less physically active, etc. You were also more likely to think negatively, such as “things won’t get better”, “there’s no point trying”, “might as well not try”. These are definitely not the thoughts and behaviours that will help people transition during the change process.
So how do we instil a sense of optimism within our change initiatives?
1. Celebrate the ‘return to normal’ (whatever normal looks like!). As companies start to gradually have employees return to work, initiatives must also support this by creating a sense of excitement and positivity. Think of approaches such as:
Uplifting speeches by leaders
Gift objects such as cupcakes and drinks as a part of the celebration theme
Online events promoting positive discussions and sharing
Social events fostering activity and excitement
2. Highlight new ideas and approaches to the initiative. To demonstrate that things are no longer just ‘ho-hum’ as was the case during Covid, adopt new engagement and communication approaches to liven up the initiative. Even better, ask impacted stakeholders to come up with bright ideas of how to generate a renewed sense of optimism
3. Leverage the power of communication to impart excitement and positivity. Incorporate bright and colourful images, quotes and graphic themes to instil positive energy.
4. Display consistent behaviour. There is nothing worse than having positive themes throughout, only to have initiative leads speak with monotone voice supplemented by lethargic behaviour. We are social animals. We can ‘smell’ low energy. You may need to proactive coach your leaders to ensure that they are displaying the right behaviours across all modalities …. The tone of voice, gestures, responses, reactions, etc. All aspects of behaviour can impart mood. And your job is to design and shape them to be one that is more positive.
