Infographic: How to Better Manage a Change Portfolio
Please also check out our ultimate guide to change portfolio management.
A Comprehensive Guide to Elevating Change Management Maturity
In the rapidly evolving landscape of today’s organizations, adaptability and agility have become more than just buzzwords; they are essential for survival and growth. The traditional approach of executing projects on an ad hoc basis is giving way to a strategic imperative—building change management maturity. This shift is not merely a choice but a compelling competitive advantage.
Recent statistics underscore the urgency of this change. According to a survey by Gitnux, more than 80% of businesses face increasing pressure to adapt to market forces, including technological advancements and evolving customer expectations. In this environment, mature organizations can respond swiftly to market dynamics and implement strategic initiatives with unparalleled precision and speed.
Two prominent models have emerged as guiding beacons in this transformative journey: the Change Management Institute (CMI) Change Maturity Model and Prosci’s Change Management Maturity Model. Both models are deeply entrenched in the concept of organizational competency levels, offering a structured framework comprising five progressive maturity levels.
In this article, we will embark on an enlightening journey, exploring the foundations of these two prominent change management maturity models, uncovering their intricacies, and paving the way for a more holistic approach to change management. Additionally, we will delve into the critical role of various organizational functions, shedding light on how they can actively contribute to the organization’s change maturity.
CMI Change Maturity Model
The Change Management Institute (CMI) Change Maturity Model is a comprehensive framework that takes a holistic approach to enhancing an organization’s change management maturity. It’s divided into three core functional domains, each playing a vital role in the overall journey toward maturity: Project Change Management, Business Change Readiness, and Strategic Change Leadership. These domains serve as the foundation for achieving higher levels of maturity within the organization.
Within each of these domains, the CMI model outlines a structured path, consisting of five distinct maturity levels. These levels represent a continuum, starting at Level 1, which serves as the foundational stage, and progressing all the way to Level 5, the zenith of maturity and effectiveness. This multi-tiered approach offers organizations a clear roadmap for growth and development, ensuring that they have the tools and insights necessary to navigate the complexities of change management.
The distinguishing feature of the CMI model is its emphasis on the idea that true change maturity extends beyond the realm of project execution. While executing individual projects is undoubtedly important, the CMI model advocates for a broader perspective. It recognizes that sustainable change maturity relies on the cultivation of readiness for change across the entire organization. This involves preparing teams, leaders, and employees to adapt to and embrace change seamlessly, making it an integral part of the organizational culture.
Furthermore, the CMI model underscores the indispensable role of change leadership and governance in nurturing change maturity. Effective leadership is the driving force behind successful change initiatives, and it’s the cornerstone of achieving higher levels of maturity. Governance structures ensure that change management practices are not just theoretical concepts but are woven into the fabric of how the organization operates on a day-to-day basis. Governance provides the necessary framework for sustaining change maturity in the long run.
Prosci Change Maturity Model
In contrast to the more specific functional domains emphasized by the CMI model, the Prosci Change Maturity Model takes a broader perspective, focusing on the development of overall organizational change management competency. Rather than zeroing in on individual functions, it provides a generic framework that covers key areas integral to building change maturity. These areas include:
Project Execution: The model places a strong emphasis on effective project execution as a cornerstone of change management maturity. It recognizes that the successful implementation of change initiatives hinges on well-executed projects, including detailed planning and efficient execution.
Business Capability and Readiness: Understanding the readiness and capability of the organization is another critical component. The Prosci model highlights the significance of assessing an organization’s readiness to undergo change, including the ability to adapt to new strategies, technologies, and processes.
Senior Change Leadership: Leadership is vital in steering the organization toward maturity. The model underlines the importance of senior change leadership, emphasizing that leaders play a pivotal role in setting the tone for change, championing initiatives, and fostering a culture of adaptability.
Formalized Practices and Organizational Awareness
One of the key drivers for elevating maturity, according to the Prosci model, is the establishment of formalized change management practices. This includes developing and implementing standardized methodologies to ensure consistent change management approaches across the organization. Furthermore, the model advocates for creating widespread organizational awareness about the significance of change management and its role in achieving successful outcomes.
The Role of Change Management Training
A cornerstone of the Prosci model’s approach to maturity is the incorporation of comprehensive change management training. This training equips individuals within the organization with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively manage change initiatives. It emphasizes the importance of investing in the development of internal change management expertise.
While both the CMI and Prosci models address the critical areas of project, business, and change leadership in driving change maturity, they diverge in their approaches. The CMI model offers a broader perspective, highlighting the importance of agility and continuous improvement as essential components of maturity. It places a strong emphasis on crafting the right cadence, establishing efficient business processes, and implementing robust governance practices. In contrast, the Prosci model, while equally comprehensive, provides less specific guidance on embedding change practices within the organization’s fabric and processes. Instead, it places a strong focus on the effective implementation of change initiatives.
What’s Missing in Current Change Maturity Models?
The lacuna in existing change maturity models becomes evident when we consider the need to genuinely embed change management principles and practices within an organization’s DNA. True integration transcends the mere execution of initiatives and building change capabilities among leaders and employees. It calls for collaboration across multifarious functions, including Risk Management, Marketing, Strategy, and Human Resources, to engrain change principles and practices. The focus is on holistic change capability, encompassing different functional areas. This approach fosters a culture where practices, capabilities, and supporting structures converge to enable continuous change.
In the following sections, we’ll explore examples of how change management principles and practices can be applied across seven key functions: Risk Management, Strategy and Planning, Operations, Project Management, Human Resources, Technology, and Marketing.
1. Risk Management
Change management principles and practices can enhance risk management by offering valuable insights into change-related risks. Risk professionals can leverage change management analytics to assess data-based risk factors, such as business readiness indicators and the potential impact of changes on the organization and its customers. Armed with this data, risk professionals can make informed assessments, helping the organization better understand risk profiles and make well-informed decisions.
2. Strategy and Planning
Strategic planning should not only focus on industry trends and financial data but also incorporate change capability assessments. Considerations should include the availability of change leadership talent, the organization’s capacity for executing change, and the historical performance related to change volume and velocity. The strategic roadmap should integrate historical data on change impact volumes and execution, enabling effective planning. Supporting structures and processes, including governance, reporting, and communities of practice, should be designed to ensure successful change execution.
3. Operations
Operations is a core domain for change management. This function offers numerous opportunities for applying change best practices. It involves building change management capabilities in employees and managers, enhancing employee engagement channels, and facilitating effective learning and development. With the right change data and analytics, Operations can strategically plan business delivery by making predictive assessments of performance based on projected change impacts. The key lies in systematically integrating analysis and decision-making processes within the operating cadence.
4. Project Management
This is the most familiar territory for change management. Many organizations have dedicated change managers responsible for project delivery. The conventional practices of change management, including capability building, change methodologies, portfolio management, and project delivery, are all part of the project management function.
5. Human Resources
Human Resources often plays a central role in supporting the people side of change. The function includes building change management capabilities as part of learning and development efforts. However, there’s substantial value in managing restructuring initiatives as change projects, and adhering to structured change management practices. This structured approach ensures that affected stakeholders are appropriately engaged, and processes, systems, and supporting structures impacted by change are meticulously mapped.
6. Technology
Change management is not limited to large projects; it extends to technology changes that impact stakeholders and users. Even smaller technology initiatives can benefit from the application of change management principles. Change management analytics can facilitate better technology releases and deployments. By considering change impact data, organizations can plan technical releases more effectively, taking into account organizational impacts.
7. Marketing and Customer Experience
Change management practices can play a pivotal role in marketing and customer experience functions. Customer change impacts, such as external positioning and alignment with customer needs, should be integral to marketing campaigns, product launches, and communications. These practices, including impact assessment, change analytics, and change planning, enable organizations to deliver what they promise to customers.
In closing, the true value of change maturity emerges when it becomes a part of various organizational functions. It’s not just about developing isolated methodologies or supporting initiative delivery; it’s about becoming an organization where change is seamlessly integrated into every facet.
Ready to Elevate Your Change Maturity?
The journey to achieving a higher level of change maturity begins with holistic integration within your organization. If you’re interested in exploring how The Change Compass can help you in this transformative process, we invite you to book a weekly demo with us.
Book Your Weekly Demo with The Change Compass and embark on your path toward comprehensive change management maturity.
How to create strategic and quantitative change reporting
A typical scenario for a lot of program meetings goes something like this. The program spends the bulk of the time discussing program cost, delivery progress, technical risks and resourcing challenges. And when it comes to Change Management reporting, we are often left with a few anecdotes from stakeholder interviews, and often the only real quantitative reporting comes in the forms of training completion, readiness surveys, and email communications hit rates.
One wonders why Change Management is often glossed over as fluffy and soft vs. strategic and quantitative. Even for those who intuitively believe that managing change ought to be important, most lack quantitative data that demonstrate clearly how change progress directly impacts business outcomes.
How does a business manager, program or a change practitioner demonstrate the true strategic value of tracking change initiatives in order to highlight any risks and achievements? In particular with a group of initiatives.
Here are a few ways in which change impacts may be captured and reported in a quantitative way to support strategic decision making, starting with a birds-eye-view and sequentially drill down deeper to understand the scenario to aid strategic decisions:
1. Customer Experience Impact
One of the most profound ways in which change progress may be reported at a strategic level is by the extent to which initiative change impacts are shaping customer experiences. How are customer experiences shaped as a result of the suite of changes taking place?
Do initiatives result in a positive or negative impact on customer experience? E.g. does it improve or worsen a service delivery speed, functionality, quality, etc. Legislative initiatives for example may result in negative experiences depending on the nature of the change.
Is there too much change going on at the same time?
Does the customer give a damn about the change?
2. Change Impact dashboard
A good high-level view of various change impact data for an executive dashboard may include:
Initiative quantity and type (technology, product, policy, etc.) throughout the calendar year
Impact level and type (go-live, training, customer, etc.)
At-a-glance pie charts and bar graphs are ideal for summarizing multiple axes of data within a 1-pager
3. Change impact heat map
A good heatmap can be one of the most visually memorable reports on change impact with options to drill down into colour-coded divisional and sub-divisional impacts across the timeline indicating both the number of initiatives as well as the levels of impact.
4. Detailed initiative schedule
A detailed initiative schedule is helpful as we start to drill down to analyze which initiatives are contributing to business and delivery risks. Data may include initiative names, impact level, impact type, and impact dates across the calendar year. One starts to get a detailed understanding of which initiatives are high impact, contributing to change fatigue or could be better communicated and in synchronisation with other initiatives to reduce complexity for the audience.
5. Initiative report
After we have a clear understanding of the initiatives that we need to work on aligning to improve the overall execution and delivery effectiveness we then move to clarify the details of each initiative. At this level, the reporting contains a description of the initiative, contact persons, delivery timeline and business impact data. The report, therefore, should contain sufficient details to allow very actionable steps to connect, discuss, and plan for change alignment between initiative, portfolio and business owners.
To read more about change analytics follow these links:
Top 7 challenges faced by change managers in generating insight from change data
How to better manage a change portfolio?
- Set up a simple, business-led change governance
Instead of a myriad of project-based governance bodies, establish a divisional business body focused on managing change impacts on people and customers. This may be embedded into an existing monthly divisional leadership meeting. In this governance meeting, the focus is on:
- Reviewing the data and trends of change impacts (linking with other initiative data such as benefits and scheduling)
- Identifying any risks regarding the pace and the ‘amount’ of change
- Identifying opportunities to link change activities with key strategic themes so that it is easier for people to digest and absorb the change
- Identify opportunities to integrate roll-out activities such as training and workshops as appropriate
- Decision-making on the prioritization of change releases
- Monitor the feedback from impacted groups on the effectiveness of change delivery
This is not to say that project-based governance is not required. Business involvement is critical in project governance. However, a key focus should be placed on understanding the overall picture first and what the business is going to go through. From this clarity, it will then be easier to see how each initiative fits into the overall picture and if there are rollout considerations.
With clear change impact data, discussions will also be more swift, focused on more strategic conversations vs. gut feel and individual preferences. In this way, change is also being positioned as much more rigorous, data-driven, and scientific, versus fluffy, undefined, or worse, unimportant.
- Embed change impact management into the operating rhythm
One way to improve change capability in an organization is to focus operations on change and implementation, versus viewing change management as a separate piece of work done by Change Managers. This involves:
- Build the framework for initiative drivers to define and articulate change impacts, and own the update of initiative data in a central repository. When all initiative owners regularly update the data on change impacts, all stakeholders benefit. Initiative drivers are able to see what else is impacting the business and how to avoid any implementation bottlenecks. On the other hand, the business is able to better see the total picture.
- Build agreement within the organization to create one integrated picture of change impacts, irrespective of whether a change initiative is deemed as a project, program, or a business-as-usual activity. To do this, we need to adopt the perspective of the user impacted. Changes for them could include everything ranging from policy changes, technology changes, process changes, restructuring, marketing campaigns, and product changes.
- Build the management of change impacts into the roles and responsibilities of Operations. This includes a) considering change impacts in the process of resource planning, b) the ‘air traffic control’ of landing initiatives and their impacts, c) ensuring the impacted groups are ready and engaged) that the business has demonstrated the ownership and capability to adopt the change, e) managers accountable of driving the behavior embedment and monitoring of performance are clear.
- The change impact data should be open for anyone to access and understand. This would then put the onus on everyone to own and drive change. The frontline should also be able to look at the plan and understand the nature of the impacts on them. This will add significant value within an environment of concurrent multiple changes.
- Organizations should start with one division to test this model. Eventually, roll this out to other divisions. Once the whole organization has adopted this, an enterprise-level governance body may then be formed to promote cross-functional conversations in managing the ‘air traffic control’ and landing of initiatives. The quality of this conversation will also then be a key precursor to maximizing the benefit realization of initiatives
Check out our infographic on how to better manage a change portfolio.
- Quantify change impacts
One of the core problems faced by companies is how to quantify change impacts and make them more tangible, easier to visualize, measure and manage.
Change impacts may be quantified in the following way:
- The level of change. This denotes the intensity of the change impact. A Likert scale may be used to define and illustrate the different levels. For example, Level 1 could be minimal impacts, requiring the user only to attend a few meetings and read a few emails. However, at the highest level, the impact could be defined as significant, requiring role changes, in-depth training, and a new way of operating.
- The type of change. Different categories of change may be listed, including technology changes, policy changes, marketing changes, product changes, etc.
- Timing of change. This refers to the timing at which a change impact will occur. The impact may be different for different groups of stakeholders.
- The scale of the impact. This denotes the number of employees impacted as an estimate.
- Parts of the business impact. This refers to which parts of the business are impacted by this particular change impact.
- Change activity. This includes various change activities associated with the change impact, including training, workshops, formal communications, etc.
From the information provided, the analysis may then be undertaken, looking at the loading of change, whether there is any potential change clash from a timing perspective, whether there is behavior consistency across initiatives rolled out, and whether the initiatives overall are driving the organization’s strategy forward.
Moreover, with sufficient historical data, the company may then be able to correlate the impact of the ‘amount’ of change on business performance. From this, the change impact data may then be used to even ‘predict’ future business performance. Such is the power of quantifying change impact.
- Clarify customer impacts to manage customer experience
A significant number of companies are now jumping on the bandwagon of focusing on customer experience. This is because other value levers such as cost and efficiency are almost maxed out and there are few additional efficiencies that can be achieved there.
To truly manage customer experience one needs to start by understanding the total picture of what the company is planning to change for a particular group of customers. This includes:
- Customer change impact data, such as change type, timing, scale, and level of change (similar to those for employees)
- Customer type – this could be customer segments or other categorizations of customer groups
- A positive or negative change from the customer’s perspective
- Does the customer care about this change? How important is this change for the customer? It is critical to assess this from the customer’s lens, vs. the company’s lens?
After collecting these data, a customer’s experience may then be mapped out from the perspective of change impacts on their experience. Is there a number of legislative initiatives that will create a negative customer experience? Is there too much change planned? What would be the optimal ‘change loading’ for customers? The customer impact data enables valuable discussions and decisions
Check out our ultimate guide to change portfolio management.
- Leverage technology solutions
For smaller organizations managing change initiatives, spreadsheets may suffice. However, for large organizations managing a large portfolio of changes, spreadsheets may not be sufficient.
Technology solutions now enable both drivers and receivers of the change to access impact information any time and anywhere. This promotes collaboration and effective conversations. Companies will not need to rely on an army of analysts to constantly collect and verify the data, since the data is coming straight from ‘the source’. Reporting efforts are also optmized by having standard, automated reporting, generated at any time required.
Technology solutions are also great for agile-focused organizations where there is always a series of constant and iterative changes, and where change impact information could change rapidly from week to week. Access to accurate and timely data is even more critical.
Stakeholders across the company are also able to see, in real-time, the change impacts being planned. From this, meaningful conversations may be had in terms of the level and nature of change impacts from different stakeholder perspectives. For example, does the business share the same agreement of change impact as the program? This creates transparency and shared accountability in the ownership of change outcomes.
- Use data-based feedback to improve change capability
In implementing a data-based model of managing change impacts organizations will experience an uplift in change capability. How?
After a division reviews the feedback from stakeholders after initiatives get rolled out, referencing indicated ‘amount’ of change planned, this reference ‘amount’ then becomes a yardstick for answering ‘how much is too much change’.
Moreover, with regular routines and reviews over time, the yardstick of change loading can then aid future decision making on 1) the optimal change impact loading for the business, 2) readiness activities required to better manage across changes, 3) prioritization required, and 4) potential for synchronization across initiatives (e.g. communication or training efforts).
In this way, the business division learns to determine how best to utilize change impact data to prepare for changes, avoid change fatigue, and to maximize adoption. The outcome of this is testing with ‘tactics’ of managing the changing load, and improved business performance. With open data sharing, there is also an opportunity for cross-divisional learning to pick up tips from each other on how to manage multiple changes and still deliver operational performance.
Click here to download our infographic on How to Better Manage a Change Portfolio.
How to manage multiple change initiatives
There is now plenty of research and articles on change management out there. However, most of these are focused on driving a singular change. How many organisations can you think of that are just driving one singular change initiative? Exactly.
Particularly when an organization is adopting agile ways of working, managing multiple change initiatives becomes even more critical. If everyone is working towards one big initiative launch it is much easier to plan for. It is more complex with lots of initiatives all launching a series of changes throughout the year. However, in agile organisations this is the norm. Managing the impact of changes on the frontline, in this case, becomes more complex with significant coordination and planning involved.
To effectively manage multiple change initiatives one needs to establish the following:
Oversight of the totality of what is changing
To manage multiple change initiatives one needs to be able to see what is changing. This sounds simple but yet one of the hardest things to accomplish for large organisations where there are often more than a hundred or hundreds of change initiatives at any one time. To achieve this, one needs to be able to capture the data on the change impacts and how they impact different parts of the organization. This can then be used to better plan for initiatives.
Most organisations still struggle with spreadsheets to try and create some view of what is changing, however still not able to effectively capture the totality of what is changing since this involves a view of not just projects, but also BAU initiatives. To move with the times, organisations need to be able to leverage digital means of understanding what is changing and what this means from a planning perspective.
Effective governance and decision making
Most organisations are good at ensuring that there is a structured way of allocating the dollars to the right priorities when it comes to funding projects. However, the same may not be said for effective governance in orchestrating and planning for how change initiatives are implemented and embedded into BAU.
An effective operations governance process is required, leveraging from a clear view of the totality of what is changing, and through this effective sequence, package, integrate or prioritise the change impacts on the organization.
The governance body needs to be able to establish clear decision-making and escalation processes and articulate this to initiative drivers.
Clear and effective business engagement channels
With significant changes happening concurrently, it is vital to establish clear and scalable business engagement channels to ensure that stakeholder groups feel like they are a part of designing the changes (vs. being a victim of them). This includes regular business forums such as weekly, monthly or quarterly meetings and standups. Other communication channels would also include intranet, email, Yammer or audio-visual outlets
It is through well-oiled engagement channels that initiative owners can quickly and frequently implement changes rapidly and concurrently.
To read more about managing multiple initiatives check out our Knowledge section under Portfolio Management where we have a range of practical articles.