We’ve all heard about how change is the only constant and that change is intensifying and not going away. On top of increasing digitisation, we have Covid, extreme weather disruptions as well as other company changes. Not all changes can be planned for. Change is a balancing act, requiring significant skill and management. The analogy comes to mind of a spinning plate circus act. Each plate needs attention and constant spinning. The problem is when you have 10, 50, or 100+ plates, it becomes almost impossible to pay attention to every single one across the company.
This is exactly why it is so critical to have a single view of change. When you are only spinning a few plates you can easily see them all and have enough attention and bandwidth to ensure they are all spinning effectively. When the number and intensity of change multiply, this becomes tricky. Without a single view of change, how can any organisation manage change across the board? This is exactly the problem.
For most companies, each project team is organised as a separate team, with a separate set of stakeholders. Multiply this by the number of projects and you get the problem. The number of silos that is each project creates significant complexity for the organisations. These include:
At any one time, there will be multiple projects impacting the same part of the business. Since each project is only focused on its activities, they are mostly not aware of project activities from other projects that are impacting the same stakeholders.
For the same group of stakeholders, there may be very different ways of engagement and change journeys required. Too many different types of change can make it difficult for the impacted stakeholders to digest. Also, these changes, when combined, may or may not support the business objectives of that particular part of the business.
Some PMOs try to contain this complexity by creating different portfolios in which to group projects. The thinking is that each of the portfolio managers can manage a set of projects and can try to help join the dots where possible to coordinate the various releases and implementation of projects within each portfolio. However, managing too many portfolios can create even more complexity and thereby be less agile for the organisation. Also, most project portfolio managers are typically focused more on technical activities and releases, and less on resultant people impacts.
Why create a single view of change?
1. Change saturation and limited capacity
The first reason for creating a single view of change is to assess the risk for and avoid change saturation. There is evidence from several surveys including that from Prosci showing that change saturation/fatigue is one of the biggest challenges for organisations in changing. The pressure to change fast and still maintain business performance is real and impacts a wide range of industries.
Research highlighting change fatigue as a key change challenge
2. Business capacity.
Even if there was not a risk of change saturation and fatigue, there is constantly a challenge of limited business capacity to change versus ‘keeping the lights on’ activities or executing business-as-usual tasks. This includes both the capacity to change for those impacted by the change, and also for subject-matter-experts from the business who may be pulled by multiple projects and thereby have limited bandwidth.
3. Change portfolio management
The first 2 points are of a business lens, in terms of business-related change impacts across projects. However, from a change portfolio perspective, it also makes sense to have a single view of change to better manage a change portfolio.
What is offered by a single view of change that is meeting a gap with the data captured by existing PMO is, change impact. This change impact includes types of stakeholders, roles, the parts of the organisations, and how they are impacted by the change. Data may capture the extent of the change effort required, the time required to undergo change activities, and even behaviours required as a part of the transformation.
With a single view of change, the project portfolio can be better managed in terms of:
Project change resource allocation
Project release coordination and harmonisation and how they impact stakeholders
Change execution design across projects
Examine opportunities to create ‘change bundles’ where it makes sense, or to break down change releases into smaller pieces if that is a better fit for the business
Monitor operational risks across change releases
4.Change adoption
The ultimate goal of creating a single view of change is to maximize change adoption across the board. An impacted stakeholder group is likely going to experience multiple changes. If there is a way to design a change adoption process that makes it easier for the stakeholders it will significantly increase the likelihood of achieving full change adoption.
As a real example, at a major bank, the same group of stakeholders was asked by one project led by the Product division to prepare for the end of life of a credit card. They were asked to tell customers that this card will not only be sold after a certain date. On the other hand, another project led by Marketing was telling the same groups of stakeholders to sell more of this credit card to try and meet their quarterly target. Needless to say, this type of confusing message will not serve well to achieve any of the project change adoption targets.
5. Risk in change
Change risk management is an emerging discipline and growing in importance for Chief Risk Officers. This is particularly the case for financial services corporations. Risk in change is about how the organisation manages the risks by undergoing the committed changes in a way that allows them to operate safely. A key challenge is the visibility of the various changes presented in a way that allows the business to visualise these changes to be able to see the associated risks. A single view of change can add significant value from a risk lens.
If having a single view of change is so critical why is it that not more organisations have this? Here are some key reasons:
Perceived difficulty in capturing a single view of change. Most change practitioners will think of the vast number of projects that need to be engaged to create this view and the time it takes to do this.
How to capture the single view of change. With the various types of data available in each initiative some get overwhelmed and are not able to pinpoint exactly what information is required to be captured.
How to report on a single view of change. Most opt for a simple traffic light showing red, amber, and green of the varying levels of impact of each project. The problem is that this is not always based on data (instead, based on personal judgment), and is often not quite granular enough to make this useful.
One of the key benefits of a single view of change is that it is critical in supporting the work of managing a change portfolio to make the right decisions to manage change holistically. To find out more about how to calculate the financial benefit of managing a change portfolio visit our article here.
Solution on building a single view of change quickly
There are several approaches to building a single view of change quickly. As a first step, it’s important to define what outcome is required and how the artifacts might be used to make impactful business decisions. Focus on capturing the impact of change per initiative as a starter, detailing different levels of impact of the initiative based on actual impact activities of each initiative, versus using high-level personal judgment (which may be hard to defend in front of senior managers).
1. Focus on one part of the business to capture a single view of change
It’s important to note that a single view of change should always be showing the view from the business stakeholders’ perspective, versus from a project/program perspective. A way to kickstart the process with a more achievable target is to select one part of the business to start focusing on. Ideally, choose a part of the business that is concerned about change volume and would like to use the reports developed with a single view of change.
Ensure you get these stakeholders onboard, and involve those who ‘feel the pain’ of change complexity. These stakeholders can be your change champions in supporting the development and utilisation of a single view of change.
2. Focus on a smaller set of initiatives as a start
Again, rather than trying to capture every initiative in one go, start by selecting a group of initiatives, either within a portfolio or a large program. It can also be that you start by focusing on the more ‘strategic initiatives that are of higher visibility to stakeholders. These initiatives are also easier to define.
3. Conduct workshops to quickly gather data
One of the best ways to collect data quickly is to gather these in structured workshops. In each of the workshops you have a representative from each project attending, either a change manager or a project manager. In the workshop, you talk through the data you are trying to capture and work with the group to capture them. During the session, it is also a good idea to view the data collected and clarify as needed to ensure the data is spot on.
It is a good idea before the workshop to provide a simple template for participants to do the pre-work, identifying the change impact activities for their respective projects. Be clear in defining what these change impact activities mean, providing examples to show them the types of data you are after.
Here is a sample timeline for creating a single view of change:
Week 1: Align with sponsors and senior stakeholders on the ‘why’ of creating a single view of change Week 2-3: Conduct workshops to collate data cross initiatives Week 4: Create data visualisation and share with stakeholders
3. Utilise digital tools to automate and speed up the process
Using an Excel spreadsheet may be a good way to go in the beginning, but for organisations that have a digital focus, leveraging digital tools make perfect sense. Using change management tools that help you piece together a single view of change with all the fields and reports already built can save significant time and effort. With the ease of support for ongoing data collection, and reporting significant time and resources are saved. In addition, a good tool can help provide additional insight into what is happening to the organisation that manual ways may not generate. The ability to add significant value through data-backed insight that can significantly influence change implementation is one of the key advantages of leveraging a digital tool.
Different examples of a single view of change visualization
Moreover, a single view of change should not be a static artifact. Instead, it should be a live data source that is constantly changing as the organisation undergoes various changes. In a fast-paced change environment, it is even more critical to have the right digital tool to provide clear tracking and reporting.
Practical Tips and Strategies for Implementing a Single View of Change
Implementing a single view of change requires a systematic approach and careful consideration of various factors. Here are detailed practical tips and strategies to facilitate the process:
Define Clear Objectives:
Start by clearly defining the objectives of implementing a single view of change. Determine what outcomes the organization hopes to achieve, such as improved coordination, enhanced decision-making, or increased change adoption rates.
Ensure that the objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART), providing a clear roadmap for implementation and evaluation.
Engage Stakeholders:
Conduct Impact Assessments:
Conduct comprehensive impact assessments for each change initiative to understand its potential effects on stakeholders, processes, systems, and the organization as a whole.
Identify and analyze potential conflicts, dependencies, and overlaps between projects to mitigate risks and ensure effective coordination and alignment.
Utilize tools and methodologies such as stakeholder analysis, risk assessment, and change impact analysis to gather and analyze relevant data.
Utilize Change Management Tools:
Leverage change management tools and technologies to streamline the process of capturing, analyzing, and managing change data.
Choose tools that align with the organization’s needs and capabilities, providing features such as data visualization, workflow automation, collaboration, and reporting.
Train users on how to effectively utilize these tools and provide ongoing support and maintenance to ensure their optimal functionality.
Establish Clear Communication Channels:
Establish clear communication channels and protocols for sharing information, updates, and feedback related to change initiatives.
Implement regular meetings, newsletters, intranet portals, and other communication tools to keep stakeholders informed and engaged throughout the implementation process.
Encourage two-way communication, soliciting input and feedback from stakeholders and addressing any concerns or questions in a timely and transparent manner.
Provide Training and Support:
Offer comprehensive training and support to employees and stakeholders to help them navigate and adapt to change effectively.
Develop and deliver training programs, workshops, and resources focused on building change management skills, resilience, and readiness.
Provide ongoing support and guidance to individuals and teams as they navigate the complexities of change, offering coaching, mentoring, and access to relevant resources and expertise.
Monitor and Adapt:
Continuously monitor the effectiveness of the single view of change implementation and be prepared to adapt and refine strategies as needed.
Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to track progress, measure success, and identify areas for improvement.
Solicit feedback from stakeholders and project teams regularly, incorporating insights and lessons learned into ongoing iterations and updates of the single view of change.
Engage key stakeholders from across the organization in the process of establishing a single view of change. This includes representatives from project teams, senior management, frontline employees, HR, IT, and other relevant departments.
Foster open communication and collaboration among stakeholders, encouraging them to share insights, concerns, and feedback throughout the implementation process.
Consider forming a dedicated change management team or steering committee to oversee the implementation and ensure alignment with organizational goals.
By implementing these practical tips and strategies, organizations can establish a robust and effective single view of change that enhances coordination, alignment, and success in managing change initiatives across the organization.
Addressing Potential Objections or Challenges
While implementing a single view of change offers numerous benefits, organizations may encounter objections or challenges along the way. Here are detailed strategies for addressing common concerns:
Resource Allocation:
Address concerns about resource allocation by conducting a thorough assessment of the time, budget, and personnel required for implementing a single view of change.
Prioritize resources based on the strategic importance and potential impact of change initiatives, focusing efforts on high-priority projects with the greatest potential for success.
Consider leveraging external expertise or resources, such as consultants, trainers, or change management professionals, to supplement internal capabilities and ensure successful implementation.
Resistance to Change:
Proactively address resistance to change by fostering a culture of openness, transparency, and collaboration within the organization.
Communicate the rationale behind the single view of change initiative, highlighting the benefits and opportunities it presents for stakeholders and the organization as a whole.
Provide training, education, and support to help employees and stakeholders understand and embrace the changes, addressing concerns, fears, and misconceptions along the way.
Involve stakeholders in the decision-making process and empower them to contribute to the development and implementation of the single view of change, fostering ownership and commitment to its success.
Organizational Culture Barriers:
Recognize that organizational culture can influence the success of change initiatives and take proactive steps to address cultural barriers.
Assess the current organizational culture and identify any values, beliefs, or norms that may hinder the adoption of a single view of change.
Align the implementation of the single view of change with the organization’s values and cultural priorities, emphasizing collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
Engage cultural change champions and influencers within the organization to champion the initiative, build momentum, and overcome resistance to cultural change.
By proactively addressing potential objections or challenges, organizations can mitigate risks and obstacles to implementing a single view of change, paving the way for greater success and effectiveness in managing change initiatives.
In conclusion, establishing a single view of change is not merely an advantageous undertaking for change practitioners; it’s a fundamental necessity for navigating the complexities of modern organizational change. When executed effectively, a single view of change has the potential to significantly enhance the management of change portfolios and drive higher levels of change adoption across initiatives.
While the process of gathering and organizing data for a single view of change may seem daunting, structured approaches such as workshops can expedite this process, allowing organizations to achieve results within weeks rather than months.
However, it’s essential to recognize that a single view of change should not be viewed as a one-time endeavor. Instead, it should be embraced as an ongoing process, continuously evolving to meet the dynamic needs of the organization. By consistently generating engaging and impactful data visualizations, organizations can leverage their single view of change to glean valuable business insights and inform strategic decision-making.
In essence, a single view of change isn’t just a tool; it’s a transformative capability that empowers organizations to thrive amidst the ever-evolving landscape of change.
If you are about to embark on creating a single view of change and are thinking about whether or how to leverage a digital offering to support your efforts reach out and have a chat with us.
Most change practitioners are hired to support an initiative whilst others are supporting the business. Irrespective of the role, there are ways to be more strategic in managing change.
Here in this infographic we highlight the top 6 tips in being more strategic in managing change.
For the section on ‘Logic based approach to strategize change’, the MECE approach is mentioned. MECE stands for ‘Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive’. This is a technique used by strategy consultants to brainstorm and map potential solutions to solve a problem. To read up more about how to apply the MECE technique refer to this article.
It used to be that change management is the ‘poor’, neglected cousin of other disciplines in terms of access to functional software to assist in its performance. There is a wide range of software available for a range of project management disciplines such as, business analysis, testing, project management, portfolio management, etc. However, for change management the pickings have been almost non-existent 10 years ago.
Fast forward to 2022, there is now a handful of change management software in the market to assist with various work categories for the change manager. However, there is still ways to go in the understand of organisational change management in the marketplace. Compilations of change management software offering on the internet is usually a mixture of all types of software, many of which are not organisational change management in nature, and instead, technical change management (used by IT folks). For example https://orgmapper.com/change-management-tool/
How can change management software help the change practitioner?
Project change delivery
The vast majority of change management professionals in the industry are focused on delivering projects. It’s no wonder that most change management tools are focused to support project delivery as a result. What are some of the areas in which project change delivery work can be made easier by software?
1. Automating change management deliverable work
A significant part of the work of change management professionals is spent on preparing for and documenting change management deliverables. These include detailed impact assessment, learning plan, stakeholder matrix, etc. These deliverables are critical documents which are critical dependency for other project milestones. For example, stakeholder analysis and matrix is critical before broader stakeholder engagement can be made, since the analysis reveal who the stakeholders are and how they may be engaged throughout the change process.
One of the biggest pains faced by change management professionals is the amount of time required to manually create these deliverable documents. The work can be tedious, requiring weeks of manual work to complete. For example, the stakeholder matrix document can be a brain-numbing piece of activity, wading through a data dump of the organisational directory to determine every Tom, Dick and Harry which titles and names should be included in the stakeholder list for the project. Then, a lot of similar information then must be re-typed and entered into different versions in other change management deliverable documents such as detailed impact assessment or learning needs analysis.
Software can automate much of the manual work involved. For example, Change Automator allows the ability to link data already captured earlier on in the project, such as the stakeholder matrix, with other change management deliverables such as detailed impact assessment, to minimise manual re-work. Any data updated in one document, will therefore update content in other documents. This then saves on the tedious re-work required when data is updated or changes, which is pretty much a given throughout the project lifecycle. From a quality perspective, this also ensures any human-error is reduced in the data that should be synchronised across documents.
A common risk in change management delivery is that stakeholders may be left out inadvertently, or that a previously captured stakeholder in the stakeholder matrix is left out in the engagement process due to human-error. The impact of this type of error can be disastrous to the outcome of the project. Having cross-linked documents in one central place reduces the risk for this type of error.
2. Change management survey (readiness and adoption)
A key part of change management success is through careful monitoring of stakeholders throughout the change process. In the earlier part of the project, this involves understanding to what extent stakeholders may be clear of the objectives of the project, their roles in it, and general awareness. Later on in the project, it could be more on understanding their engagement level which can be a predictor of ultimate adoption and overall support for the change. This overall change readiness level should be monitored across the project through surveys or interviews.
Surveys are inherently time consuming to design, administer and report manually. Significant time can be taken throughout each phase of the survey process. This is a no-brainer in terms of using a software tool. Most projects use Microsoft Forms or SurveyMonkey to do the job. However, you may want more robust features such as conditional question design, for example, if a respondent answers ‘yes’ for not supporting the change, then an additional question pops up to ask why.
Surveys can include sentiment analysis where the focus of the survey is on any shifts in stakeholder feelings and attitudes toward the project. In this case, it is critical to define in detail the characters of each stakeholder group in concern. These would then determine respondent characteristics to measure in the survey design.
There are also tools that measure employee sentiments through corporate social media channels such as Yammer and Teams. For example, Swoop Analytics can help to measure collaboration styles and other behavioural insights about how employees interact with each other on those channels. The data map can reveal key influencers and core influential network connectors.
The biggest value of change surveys lies in the reporting. Most survey tools offer fairly simple reporting using bar charts or pie charts. For short, simple surveys these may suffice. However, if you are working on a fairly detailed change adoption tracking survey, more advanced reporting features may be required. You may want to easily change the colour scheme of the chart, change different chart types, identify anomalies and trends, or highlight certain parts of the data to make it easier for your audience.
Example from Change Automator
3. Project change reporting
Having the ease and flexibility of experimenting with different chart designs is critical for stakeholder impact. If you need hours of work to come up with a few charts the likelihood is that you will not bother. Some stakeholders may also have various personal preferences which can easily take significant time to modify. This is especially when you need the time to focus on engaging with your stakeholders, rather than tweaking excel spreadsheets.
Creating the right dashboard can create significant impact on stakeholders and help achieve your change objectives. Data speaks for itself and the right data visualisation can create memorable impact more than words alone. If you are driving toward change adoption, then having a dashboard of core behaviour changes and tracked capability shifts can act as a core part of change governance conversations. With a monthly cadence of reviewing these core data points, stakeholders can hold each other accountable to understand remaining work involved and zoom in on how to drive full change adoption.
Change reporting may not be limited to just survey results. Even seemingly ‘boring’ spreadsheet data such as detailed impact assessment may be easily turned into highly visual and interesting reports to help stakeholders understand what the changes mean and how different groups are impacted by the change.
One of the more popular ways in which change delivery has adopted software is in leveraging digital tools that provide functions to onboard or train users of new or changed systems. There are numerous providers in this area. These include WalkMe, UserGuiding, and Userlane.
Most of the tools provide similar functions to help walk users through interfaces of the system and even allow interactive experience where users can be tested in clicking on the right part of the system as a part of the training or onboarding process. The application is always for system interfaces since the tool only supports web-based systems.
Change capability
Another way in which change management software may assist change practitioners is in change capability. There are various tools that help to measure, track and report on change capability. It could be that you would like to measure the change leadership skills of leaders, change agility of stakeholder groups, or test employees as a part of skills assessment to ensure they have the right skills for the new system or process.
Using change management software, you can easily pre-program test items and answers to make it easy for yourself to score and tabulate test results without any manual work. You can also assign weightings to different questions to evaluate the capability of the respondent as a part of an assessment. You can even configure the assessment to provide results to the respondent at the end of the assessment. Generally, these features are only offered as a part of a learning management system where significant time and effort is required to prepare the system for the assessment. Now, digital tools offer easy point-and-click features, with pre-configured templates saving you significant time and cost.
Change portfolio management
Managing a portfolio of initiatives used to be an approach only adopted by more mature organisations. However, with the rapid pace and intensity of changes, more and more organisations are adopting this approach to manage multiple initiatives.
Managing a portfolio of initiatives can only be done via data. There is already a myriad of project portfolio management systems in the market to help PMOs and project portfolio managers manage a slew of initiatives. The focus of project portfolio management systems is on project timelines, cost, resourcing, etc.
Change portfolio management focuses on the impact of changes and how they may impact the organisation across initiatives. There is also focus on change delivery resourcing and change capability development. One of the most critical pain points faced by organisations is change saturation and change fatigue. To better manage a portfolio of initiatives from a change perspective and manage potential change saturation, data is required.
Effective change portfolio management tools can help you:
Identify and plot change saturation points for different parts of the organisation
Identify risk levels of potential change saturation across roles, locations, layers of the organisations, etc.
Assess to what extent changes may be better delivered as an integrated package to one part of the organisation, or broken down to smaller, more digestable chunks
Assess to what extent changes may be better aligned and delivered through integrated messaging from an impacted stakeholder perspective (vs. from project perspective)
Plan for change management delivery resourcing
Examples of change portfolio data visualisation from The Change Compass
In summary, there are many strong reasons why change management professionals should adopt digital change management solutions to achieve greater change outcomes as well as to automate the tedious parts of the work to gain time to spend with stakeholders. With the ever increasing pace of digitisation in organisations, change management must also follow suit in digitising itself. Just as we could use modern fabrication techniques to build skyscrapers that are stronger and more resilient vs using traditional brick and mortar, so should change managers in leveraging digital tools to support digital transformations.
Change saturation is a common term used by change practitioners to describe a picture where there may be too many changes being implemented at the same time. The analogy is that of a cup with limited capacity, where if too much change is poured into a fixed volume, the rest will not stay in the cup or be ‘embedded’ as adopted changes.
At the end of 2020, Pivot Consulting conducted extensive research where they asked a range of different roles in organisations about implementing change. When questioned about key challenges to executing strategy and driving change, change fatigue or employees being overwhelmed by multiple initiatives is identified as one of the top 2 most critical challenges. It can be seen that change saturation is not just a popular discussion topic but a serious focus area that is posing significant challenges to a range of organisations.
Research from Pivot Consulting, 2020
There are many common ways of understanding and approaching change saturation. However, many of these are not always correct with some being quite misleading. In this article, we aim to review the 5 key incorrect assumptions about change saturation that are downright misleading and should be directly challenged. These may be assumptions that are widely held and assumed to be ‘facts’ and are not questioned.
Incorrect assumptions:
In the following, we outline the key assumptions that should be challenged when approaching change saturation.
1. Change is disruption
The first assumption is that change is always ‘disruption’. Change can be dynamic. There is also a range of different types of changes. Therefore, change does not always need to be negative and cause chaos or impede normal ways of working.
Take, for example, agile teams. A part of the work of an agile team is to drive continuous improvement. The team establishes regular routines to try something new, i.e. a change. They then execute it and examine the data to see the effect of the change on business. For these teams, ‘planned’ changes are just part of normal ways of working, and therefore not necessarily viewed as ‘disruptions’ to their work since this is part of their work.
On the other hand, change is also not always ‘negative’. Some changes may be there to make it easier for the employee or the customer. For example, it may be that the organisation is implementing system-driven automation to save employees time in entering manual information. These changes are typically welcomed by the impacted employees and are not perceived as ‘disruptions’ to their work. Instead, they are typically perceived as positive changes.
As a result, change needs to be understood by its specific impact on the various stakeholders, and not by its ‘disruption’. A more useful way to understand the impact of the changes on end stakeholders may be to understand the various activities required for them to undergo the change and shift their behaviours.
For example, it could be that a customer service rep may need to undergo training sessions, team briefing sessions, review documentation, and receive team leader feedback, in the overall change journey. These activities may be ‘on top’ of existing normal business routines, or they may be a part of existing business routines, and therefore not ‘adding’ to the ‘saturation level’.
2. Change capacity is determined by capability
It is a commonly held belief that change capacity is determined by change capability at individual, team and organisational levels. Yes, factors such as change leadership, individual change capability and skills can improve change capacity. However, change capacity is not only determined by capability.
Indeed, there are other factors that determine change capacity.
a. Biological.
Humans are designed to have a limited attention span. When there are too many things happening at the same time, we can only focus on a limited number of things at the same time. There are many studies that show if we keep switching focus between different tasks, we are likely to not have full focus and attention which will leave us to making mistakes.
This also applies to learning. The more we focus on multiple tasks, the more we are not able to tune out and therefore engage in deeper processing and learning.
What about thinking about multiple initiatives? According to University of Oregon researchers, professors Edward Awh and Edward Vogel, the human brain has a built-in limit on the number of discrete thoughts it can entertain at one time. The limit for most individuals is four. It does not matter how much capability development one focuses on, there is a limit to how much capacity can be created. Therefore, there is a cap on to what extent capability may lift change capacity. After all, no matter how skillful someone is, biological tendencies and restrictions remain.
b. Expectation.
The level of expectation of the extent to which one can change can determine the outcome. Studies have shown the individual negativity or positivity can impact the outcome. The more negative an individual of the outcome, the more negative the outcome becomes. However, if the expectations are unrealistically high, they may lead to disappointment.
Think back to the impacts of Covid, and how what would have seemed almost impossible in terms of virtual working has suddenly become a reality overnight. Often what companies had imagined taking 10 years to achieve, is suddenly achieved overnight out of necessity. The expectation that there is no other way and that there is no choice leads to the acceptance of the change scenario.
3. Basing saturation points purely on opinions
As change practitioners, we often aim to be the ‘people’ representative. Many think of themselves as the ‘social worker’ or ‘welfare worker’ who are there to be the voice of employees. Whilst, it is true that we need to be the voice of people, the definition of ‘people’ should not just include employees, but a range of stakeholders including managers.
Especially when the change environment is complex and challenging, there may be a tendency for people to ‘over-inflate’ the reality of the situation. Sometimes it may be easier to call out that there is too much change in the hope that this feedback will result in less change volume, thereby making work ‘easier’.
Change practitioners need to be aware of political biases or tendencies for people to report on feedback that is not substantiated by data. Interviews with stakeholders may need to be supplemented by surveys or focus groups to test the validity of the results. We should not simply assume that anything stakeholders tell us are ‘truths’ per se, especially since there is political motivation in biased reporting.
Example from The Change Compass – Plotting change saturation line against change impact levels
4. Focus on capability vs systems and processes to manage saturation
An overt focus on capability, knowledge and skills, may lead to gaps in the overall ability to manage change saturation. This is because skills and competencies are just one of many elements that supports change execution. Beyond this, effective organisations also need to focus on having the right systems and processes established to support ongoing change execution.
Systems and processes include such as:
Learning operations processes whereby there is a clear set of steps for the business to communicate, undertake, and embed training/learning activities. These include the right channel to organise people capacity to attend sessions, communication channels regarding the nature of scheduled training sessions and monitoring the effectiveness of these sessions
Communication processes include having a range of effective channels that promote dynamic communication between employees and managers, as well as across different business units and teams.
Data and reporting mechanisms to visualise change impacts, measurement on change saturation levels, and report on change delivery tracking and change adoption progress
Governance established to examine change indicators including change saturation, risks identified, and make critical decisions on sequencing, prioritisation, and capacity mitigation
Skills and competencies are one element, but without processes and systems established to execute the change and track/report on change saturation, there will be limited business outcomes achieved.
Outlined in this article are just 5 of the common assumptions about change saturation that are misleading. There are many more other assumptions. The key for change practitioners is not to blindly rely on ‘methodologies’ or concepts, but instead to focus on data and facts to make decisions. Managing change saturation needs to be data-driven. Otherwise, stakeholders may easily dismiss any change saturation claims (as is often the case with senior managers). Armed with the right data and insights, the change practitioner has the power to influence a range of change decisions to achieve an optimal outcome for the organisation.
An important part of measuring meaningful change is to be able to design effective communication effectiveness change management surveys that measure the purpose of the survey it has set out to measure the level of understanding of the change. Designing and rolling out change management surveys is a core part of what a change practitioner’s role is. However, there is often little attention paid to how valid and how well designed the survey is. A survey that is not well-designed can be meaningless, or worse, misleading. Without the right understanding from survey results, a project can easily go down the wrong path. This is how this survey can be a powerful tool to ensure smooth transition for the change initiative.
Why do change management surveys need to be valid?
A survey’s validity is the extent to which it measures what it is supposed to measure. Validity is an assessment of its accuracy. This applies whether we are talking about a change readiness survey, a change adoption survey, employee engagement, employee sentiment pulse survey, or a stakeholder opinion survey.
What are the different ways to ensure that a organizational change management survey can maximise its validity and greater success?
Face validity. The first way in which a survey’s validity can be assessed is its face validity. Having good face validity is that in the view of your targeted respondents the questions measure what they aimed to measure. If your survey is measuring stakeholder readiness, then it’s about these stakeholders agreeing that your survey questions measure what they are intended to measure.
Predictive validity. If you really want to ensure that your survey questions are scientifically proven to have high validity, then you may want to search and leverage survey questionnaires that have gone through statistical validation. Predictive validity means that your survey is correlated with those surveys that have high statistical validity. This may not be the most practical for most change management professionals.
Construct validity. This is about to what extent your change survey measures the underlying attitudes and behaviours it is intended to measure. Again, this may require statistical analysis to ensure there is construct validity.
At the most basic level, it is recommended that face validity is tested prior to finalising the survey design.
How do we do this? A simple way to test the face validity is to run your survey by a select number of ‘friendly’ respondents (potentially your change champions) and ask them to rate this, followed by a meeting to review how they interpreted the meaning of the survey questions.
Alternatively, you can also design a smaller pilot group of respondents before rolling the survey out to a larger group. In any case, the outcome is to test that your survey is coming across with the same intent as to how your respondents interpret them.
Techniques to increase survey validity
1. Clarity of question-wording.
This is the most important part of designing an effective and valid survey. This is a critical part of the change management strategy. The question wording should be that any person in your target audience can read it and interpret the question in exactly the same way.
Use simple words that anyone can understand, and avoid jargon where possible unless the term is commonly used by all of your target respondents
Use short questions where possible to avoid any interpretation complexities, and also to avoid the typical short attention spans of respondents. This is also particularly important if your respondents will be completing the survey on mobile phones
Avoid using double-negatives, such as “If the project sponsor can’t improve how she engages with the team, what should she avoid doing?”
2. Avoiding question biases
A common mistake in writing survey questions is to word them in a way that is biased toward one particular opinion which may lead to biased employee feedback. This assumes that the respondents already have a particular point of view and therefore the question may not allow them to select answers that they would like to select.
Some examples of potentially biased survey questions (if these are not follow-on questions from previous questions):
Is the information you received helping you to communicate effectively to your team members through appropriate communication channels?
How do you adequately support the objectives of the project
From what communication mediums do your employees give you feedback about the project
3. Providing all available answer options
Writing an effective employee survey question means thinking through all the options that the respondent may come up with regarding the upcoming change. After doing this, incorporate these options into the answer design. Avoid answer options that are overly simple and may not meet respondent needs in terms of choice options.
4. Ensure your chosen response options are appropriate for the question.
Choosing appropriate response options may not always be straightforward. There are often several considerations, including:
What is the easiest response format for the respondents?
What is the fastest way for respondents to answer, and therefore increase my response rate?
Does the response format make sense for every question in the survey?
For example, if you choose a Likert scale, choosing the number of points in the Likert scale to use is critical.
If you use a 10-point Likert scale, is this going to make it too complicated for the respondent to interpret between 7 and 8 for example?
If you use a 5-point Likert scale, will respondents likely resort to the middle, i.e. 3 out of 5, out of laziness or not wanting to be too controversial? Is it better to use a 6-point scale and force the user not to sit in the middle of the fence with their responses?
If you are using a 3-point Likert scale, for example, High/Medium/Low, is this going to provide sufficient granularity that is required in case there are too many items where users are rating medium, therefore making it hard for you to extract answer comparisons across items?
5. If in doubt leave it out
There is a tendency to cram as many questions in the survey as possible because change practitioners would like to find out as much as possible from the respondents. However, this typically leads to poor outcomes including poor completion rates. So, when in doubt leave the question out and only focus on those questions that are absolutely critical to measure what you are aiming to measure.
6.Open-ended vs close-ended questions
To increase the response rate of change readiness survey questions, it is common practice to use closed-ended questions where the user selects from a prescribed set of answers. This is particularly the case when you are conducting quick pulse surveys to sense-check the sentiments of key stakeholder groups. Whilst this is great to ensure a quick, and painless survey experience for users, relying purely on closed-ended questions may not always give us what we need.
It is always good practice to have at least one open-ended question to allow the respondent to provide other feedback outside of the answer options that are predetermined. This gives your stakeholders the opportunity to provide qualitative feedback in ways you may not have thought of. This may include items that indicate employee resistance, opinions regarding the work environment, new ways of working, or requiring additional support.
Writing an effective and valid change management survey best practices for a specific change initiative is often glanced over as a critical skill. Being aware of the above 6 points will get you a long way in ensuring that your survey addresses areas of concern in a way that aligns with your change management process and strategy and will measure what it is intended to measure. As a result, the survey results will be more bullet-proof to potential criticisms and ensure the results are valid, providing information that can be trusted by your stakeholders.
Change saturation is one of the popular search items when it comes to measuring change management. How do we effectively measure change saturation without resorting to personal opinions? And how might we formulate effective recommendations that are logical and that stakeholders can action immediately?
Use this recipe to measure change saturation using The Change Compass.
Measuring change has become increasingly popular within the change management discipline. It used to be that change practitioners were more comfortable thinking and proposing that they are all about people, and therefore people factors are not hard and easy to measure. Areas such as change leadership, training, communication, and engagement were often the key tenants of a change professional’s key focus areas.
With increasing digitisation and focus on data and metrics, change management is also not exempt from this trend. Business leaders are now demanding that change management, just like most other business disciplines, demonstrate their value and work outcome through measurable metrics.
Using change management software to measure change
Even before the more recent trend of focusing on various aspects of change, change management software products have emerged. 10 years, when the basic idea for The Change Compass started, there was only 1-2 change management software in the market. Several years after that, there started to be 2-4 product offerings emerging in the marketplace.
Over the years, many of these software products have closed shop, or been sold to other companies. At the time, the need for change management software to measure change was not strong in the marketplace. It was perhaps an immature market where a lot of practitioners saw little need.
Types of change management software
There are many types of change management software. First, let’s spell out that we are not talking about technical change management software such as ITIL or technical change tracking software. The focus of this article is on organisational change management software.
The different types of change management software include:
Change project adoption measurement – Such as ChangeTracking that focuses on measuring the extent to which the project is progressing on track from a stakeholder perception and adoption angle
Change project implementation measurement – Such as Change Automator that provides a platform to automate project change delivery work that change practitioners focus on in capturing change deliverables, and overall change reporting and tracking
Change portfolio measurement – Such as The Change Compass that offers data visualisation for a change portfolio (collection of change projects) to help make portfolio level decisions on prioritisation, sequencing and delivery risks
Other organisational measurement – Such as OrgMapper that provides organisational network analysis maps and networks to understand relationship networks across individuals and groups
Data capture and automation
One of the key value propositions of a digital change management software is to provide some levels of automation in the capture of change management data, so that the data may be easily analysed and visualised. However, in our analysis of available change management software in the market, we found that there is a wide range of various levels of automation. Some have almost zero automation, whilst others have significant levels of automation.
In searching for an effective digital change management tool, ensure that you take into account the following in data capture:
To what extent is the data capture flexible and can be easily tailored
What are the system features to automate data entry?
Is there a range of data analytics from the data entered
Is the tool just a data depository without insight generation and data analysis features
Is the data capture too categorical? E.g. Agile vs Waterfall? And how useful are the data fields in terms of making decisions or generating insights?
Here is an example of automation from Change Automator where stakeholder data can be pulled from the company’s Microsoft Azure system to reduce the significant time required to input stakeholder details.
Change Automator example of using automation to save time
Data analysis & reporting
The power of digital software is that it can easily calculate, track, and visually show the metrics that we are focused on. Looking at raw data is meaningless if it cannot be turned into highly engaging and meaningful charts that generate an understanding of some kind of insight into the organisational situation with regard to initiatives.
Some change management software reports simple figures that may provide limited usefulness. For example, the number of impacts affecting each stakeholder group may be interesting but there is not much we can do with the data. This is because the number of impacts doesn’t indicate the overall severity or volume of the impacts.
Data visualisation should also support ‘drill-through’, where the user is able to click on the chart and drill into more details about that particular part of the data to better understand what contributes to it. This is a critical part of data analysis and understanding the story that the data is telling us.
Effective data visualization
Data visualisation formats are also critical. With the wrong data visualisation design, it becomes very difficult for people to understand and interpret the data. Ideally, the user should see very clearly what the data is showing them visually. For example, pie charts have become very popular in reporting. However, pie charts are only useful to contrast a few different data points. When there are too many data points and the data is too similar, the human eye finds it difficult to compare and contrast any differences.
Effective data visualisation should also allow the user to highlight a part of the data to create a visual emphasise to support a particular point. Making the visuals simple for the user is ultimately the most important part of chart design. The more complex it is, the harder it is for you to get your point across to your stakeholders.
To learn more about designing the right data visualisation to create optimal impact check out our infographic.
Insight generation & decision making
Ultimately, the change management software should be designed to provide insight into what is going to happen to the impacted people (whether it be employees, customers, or partners). The data should help you zoom into where is the source of the problem or the risk area, what the risk is, and potentially how to make a recommendation to resolve it. The drill-through capability is critical to support the insight generation.
The data visualisation should also directly support you or your business stakeholders to make business decisions on change. If the data was just ‘interesting’ it will not have much impact and after a while business stakeholders will lose their interest in the data. Instead, data and reporting should form a core part of regular business decision-making. Decision making using change data can be:
Within a project in making roll out and implementation decisions
Within a portfolio in making prioritisation and sequencing decisions
Within a business unit in making capacity prioritisation, business readiness and operational planning decisions
Across the enterprise in PMO and change governance settings on prioritisation, sequencing, benefit realisation and enterprise planning
Tailoring of data visualization
For those users who are more advanced with change analytics, there may be stakeholder requests to tailor charts in different formats. It could also be that for a specific organisational scenario, the user would like to create a tailored chart to show the specific problem that is not represented in existing off-the-shelf report designs.
In this case, the software should have the flexibility to allow these users to select their desired data fields and even types of charts that they want to work with to design the tailored chart without too much effort, and ideally not from scratch.
Here is an example from Change Automator where the user is able to easily tailor a chart by selecting the data fields, experiment with different charting, to come up with the ideal chart to influence stakeholders.
Example from Change Automator on easily tailoring charts
Trend analysis and predictive analysis through machine learning
Reading and interpreting individual charts can yield significant insights. However, the real power of analytics is to look at historical trends and even predict future trends based on data. Therefore, having the right data, over time, can create significant value. This is why investing in data is so critical, and why not just technology companies, but most industries are focused on digitising and leveraging the power of data.
The same thing applies to change analytics and change data. Invest in change data and the benefits can be enormous. By better understanding data trends with the assistance of machine learning, the system can highlight and draw your attention to critical observations and findings that you may have skipped.
With sufficient data, you’re also able to utilise machine learning to generate predictive data trends. Some examples of situations in which this can provide significant value include:
Typical times in which the business unit or team are busy with changes or operational challenges
Typically how initiatives of different complexities take to adopt and embed within the business
Typical delays in forecasted versus actual change implementation timeline
Stakeholder groups that tend to show the highest resistance or lowest engagement to initiatives
Predicted time it takes to realise targeted benefits
Investing in a change management software can create significant value for your organisation by measuring change and making it visual and easier to understand. Selecting the right tool is critical since there is a variety of options on the market. Examine closely the functionalities and how they enable you to make business decisions since not all charts may be useful. With the right software support, you will be able to not only tell a compelling, data-backed story of what is going to happen to the business, but also the logical recommendations that stakeholders find hard to dispute.
Change Automator example of leveraging machine learning in change analytics
Being more strategic in managing change is about being more focused on those aspects of driving change that will create the most value for the organisation. This is directly comparable to what strategy is about. Strategy is about choosing a particular path to achieve a particular set of goals, versus other paths. There are many paths and many ways to manage change and different paths may yield different results.
What are the advantages of being more strategic? Being more strategic means you are clearer in terms of the specific approach you are taking in leading change and how that translates to a particular set of results. It is not just about following a particular methodology blindly or whatever approach is ‘in vogue’.
Strategic change practitioners create greater value for the organisation. They are more able to connect with senior managers in terms of driving organisational impact and results versus being focused just on individual implementation tactics. They are also able to easily articulate why change activities are carried out and how they contribute to the overall outcomes. Moreover, they’re able to position the value of the change in the overall strategy of the organisation and why the change is important. In approaching the implementation they zoom in on the parts of the change that makes the most difference.
How does a change practitioner be more strategic?
Start with understanding and linking the initiative to the strategy
Every initiative exists to support a particular strategy that the company has created. Change practitioners need to have a good understanding of the organisational strategies, why they were created, and what they aimed to achieve. At a basic level, it should be clearly understood by all stakeholders why the initiative was created and the strategy it aims to support.
A clear grasp of how the initiative supports an organisational strategy helps the change practitioner position the size of the value delivered by the initiative. As a result, it helps with determining the focus and effort that should be devoted to and how to realise the objectives of this initiative.
Organisational strategy can also be understood using the 3 horizons model. Strategies and initiatives can fall within each of the 3 horizons.
Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities and new business to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption.
3 horizons model (from Stratechi)
Most change practitioners would be involved in horizon 1 initiatives where there are immediate changes required to the business in the shorter term. However, there are also initiatives about transformation in horizon 2 concerned with building core capabilities. Horizon 3 is about building and launching new products or launching into new markets outside of the existing business. There may also be initiatives within this horizon. Understanding which horizon the initiative falls under helps with its positioning.
Improving business acumen:
Having good business acumen is critical to being a strategic change practitioner. If you do not understand how the business works then it is hard to be strategic. This is because without understanding key drivers of how the business works, it is hard to formulate the right positioning to support the change initiative in a way that supports the realisation of the strategy.
Don’t fret. There are a few focus areas that can point you in the right direction.
1. How the company makes money.
At a basic level, understand how the company is structured and how it makes money. Lay out all the various departments of the organisation. Focus on key operations of the business. This can be labelled as a value chain, or how services and products get produced and delivered to the customer. What are the key investments of the organisation? In a financial services setting the focus is on people, financial investment, and technology. In manufacturing, it could be on equipment and supply chain.
Focus on the key drivers for the company. Is the company focused on maximizing profit? Or is the focus on increasing revenue? Is there a focus on decreasing costs to increase revenue? What are the ‘big buckets’ in which cost savings can be achieved? And therefore how is your initiative supporting any of these drivers?
The critical part is to understand ‘why’ the company is focused on particular activities. There are the business-as-usual parts of the organisation focused on maintenance of the business (’keeping the lights on’), and then there are core drivers that can make or break the business and its financials. Seek to understand why particular strategies were chosen and what objectives they will help the company to achieve.
2.Competition and the market landscape.
After understanding how a company operates, the next step is to understand the landscape that it operates. A good model to be familiar with in analysing the competitive landscape of the industry is Porter’s 5 forces model. Seek to understand the interplay between the 5 forces. How do these shape the industry? As a result, how is the company positioned in the market? To be successful which forces is the company focused on managing?
Is your initiative involved in providing a better experience for customers because the landscape has been changing and customers are more demanding and have more choices than before? Is the initiative focused on launching a digital solution so that the company is not overtaken by rivals who offer better options to customers? Is the company’s profit suffering due to increased material/finance costs and therefore the initiatives are focused on containing cost? Is the program focused on improving efficiency through launching a systems solution and therefore improving customer delivery time or saving headcount?
5 forces model (from Visual Paradigm)
Focus on providing value to the organisation
We know that it is not always easy to prove the value of change management. People benefits are not always tangible and easily measured. However, this does not mean that it is less important or that measurement is not valuable. In the past, there have been efforts to try and measure change management in terms of return on investment (ROI). However, this may not be the most strategic way of demonstrating the value of change management.
Where possible, always focus on creating value for the organisation, as opposed to focusing on saving costs. The ultimate superpower of change management is about creating the right organisational environment so as to fully realize the benefits targeted by initiatives. Initiative benefits may not always be in financial dollar terms but are often in the hundreds of thousands to millions in benefits.
On the other hand, a focus on cost will always be compared against other costs. You can try and argue that the cost for change management is not large, but then there are always ways to reduce the cost. Going down the path of focusing on cost can only get you so far. This is for the same reason that a company that only focuses on reducing cost will not grow. Alternatively, focus on increasing value for the organisation means targeting a much bigger piece of the pie. Here is an example of why focusing on value often means creating a lot more impact than focusing on cost.
To adopt a rigorous logic-based approach in determining your change approach, use the MECE framework. MECE stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. The framework is commonly used by strategy consultants when they analyse the organisation and determine what strategies to formulate.
MECE framework (from Case interview)
There are 2 aspects to using this model. The model is based on a scientific hypothesis approach to problem-solving. This means that you must always begin with a hypothesis, followed by branches that test the hypothesis. To goal is to prove or disprove the hypothesis. For example, “by open-sourcing change tactics, we will achieve a better change outcome”. Then you can draw a tree diagram that branches out the various factors that can either support or disprove this. For example, these could be the potential branches:
The culture of the company is hierarchical and employees are not always forthcoming in openly sharing their ideas and expect to be lead
The project has a particularly tight timeline and there may not be sufficient time to properly engage the community for various ideas
Program sponsor and key stakeholders already have a fixed idea of how they want to implement the change, and therefore may not be open to other ideas
The organisation does not have a history of undergoing significant change and therefore employees may not understand the effort required to drive and sustain the change
Tree diagram (from Case interview)
From each branch, there can be subbranches that call out the evidence or reasoning for each branch. In this case, there seems to be strong logic that this hypothesis is false. Therefore, this is not a good strategy to use for this initiative.
Use the MECE approach to strategize your change approach. A lot of practitioners tend to prefer to follow standard change management models and methodologies. This may be OK as a reference, or a reminder. However, an effective change approach that is strategically focused on what the organisation needs must be developed using a logic-based approach. One that is tailored and designed specifically for the unique situation that the company is in currently.
Your change strategy or approach should always be unique to the requirements of the organisation. It should never be a ‘copy’ of another initiative because no two initiatives are ever completely the same. There will be tactics that are similar across initiatives, such as engagement approaches utilised or impact assessment design. However, the change strategy needs to call out what is unique about this initiative and how the change strategy is specifically designed for this situation.
Build change measurement and tracking
Business strategy can only be successful if it can be measured. Without measurement, there is no way of knowing if the objectives are achieved or when to abandon the strategy and adapt/tweak as required. The same applies to change strategy and execution. The change strategy must come with a set of metrics in order to gauge to what extent the strategy is successful or not.
Be aware of not creating too many metrics that will lead to significant effort required to capture and report the metrics. Balance effort and outcome in the tracking and reporting of change management metrics. Having anywhere from 3-5 metrics is a good number to target. When you start to have more metrics, the effort required may be too overwhelming.
Application of strategic approaches throughout the project lifecycle
Let’s go through an example of how strategic change approaches can be applied throughout the project life cycle.
Scoping – Strategic approach to look widely at the effort involved
Typically during this phase of the project, change practitioners may tend to focus only on the operational aspect of scoping out the resources required to support the project and the level of impact on the organisation. However, it is also important to be clear about the strategic importance and positioning of this initiative.
In scoping out the change management effort required to support an initiative we need to understand the strategic importance of the initiative and where it stands compared to other initiative and organisational focus areas. Key questions to consider include:
What is the priority level of the initiative
What strategy is it supporting? What’s the level of strategic importance?
What’s the right level of focus to support this initiative, balanced against other organisational priorities? For example, what else would impacted stakeholders be focused on during the impact period, and therefore how do we support having the right priorities? (i.e. the right level of ambidexterity)
Are there opportunities to integrate the roll out of this initiative with other initiatives to simplify focus, organisational effort and aid change adoption (e.g. this could be done at a communications or learning roll-out levels)
Impact assessment – Utilise strategic analysis to understand business impact
In analysing the change impact of the initiative, a strategic approach means a depth of understanding of how the business is impacted by the initiative and what benefits will mean to the business. Each part of the business by definition has different focus areas, and the business impact will be different as a result. To conduct a strategic analysis of the impact of change undergoes the following:
What is the business environment including partners, customers and suppliers? How will the change influence the dynamics of this environment?
How will the work and value of the business unit be altered as a result of the change? Conduct this analysis at multiple layers of the business unit to tease out the implications?
Will there be financial, resourcing, time, cost or effort impacts on the business unit or stakeholder group?
Will the business unit’s own focus areas or strategies be altered as a result of the change? Will its metrics, tracking and reporting be altered as well?
Change strategy formulation
In formulating the change strategy for the initiative adopt the MECE approach as described previously. You may need to formulate different hypotheses and test them before arriving at the one that is the most applicable to the organisation. Feel free to share your tree branch with your stakeholders to take them through how the change strategy is formulated. Involve them to ‘test’ the assumptions as required in the formulation.
Systems and portfolio views of the organisation
A key part of strategic change management is approaching change from a holistic and ‘systems-based’ perspective. A change project should not be viewed in its isolation but as a piece of the overall system. This means you need to understand the potential relations of this initiative with other initiatives in supporting the same strategy, and what other initiatives are focused on by the impacted business units. Having a portfolio-level visibility of the various initiatives and their relative impacts on the organisation is a key capability to support planning and decision making. This also helps you to better position or clarify your initiative compared to other focus areas.
Examples of portfolio level views of change from The Change Compass
Strategic capabilities
Different organisations and business units will have different levels of capabilities in leading, executing, and embedding change. Within the timeline and resource challenges of one initiative, it is not always possible to address all the various aspects of capability gaps. In fact, you may even face multiple capability gaps that may potentially derail the project.
Conduct a strategic capability analysis to assess which capabilities are core and critical to the success of the project. Assign weighting to each capability in terms of importance and any existing gaps. Use this analysis to formulate the top one or two capabilities you may want to focus on supporting the business to ensure the rollout is successful. Strategy is about focus and making bets. By spreading your efforts too thin you might not be able to close any of the capability gaps.
Showing the value of change management is something that change practitioners have yearned for. Some senior leaders do not understand the value of change management and either see it as a normal part of general business management or don’t even understand what it is. For less mature organisations, change practitioners often need to spend significant time educating stakeholders and explaining why they are doing the work that they are hired for. Calculating and showing the financial value of change portfolio management can be the ultimate ‘proof’.
Calculating the value of change management has been a difficult task to accomplish since a lot of the work of managing change is deemed as ‘soft’ and about people and leadership. There are various attempts to calculate in financial terms the value of managing change. These approaches include ROI (return on investment) and cost-benefit analysis. However, this approach is purely focused on a cost level and does not look at the value of the impact of change management work.
At a change portfolio level, there is even less in the literature. Not only is there not a lot of content on how to manage a portfolio of changes, but there is also almost no mention in the literature on how to calculate the financial value of managing a change portfolio.
A lot of organisations do not invest in managing initiatives across the portfolio from a change management perspective. This could be due to a lack of change management maturity or experience. Managing initiatives across a portfolio requires not only senior leader sponsorship but also having the right change governance, operational routines, change management analytics and decision-making capability in conducting ‘air traffic control’, sequencing, and resource prioritisation.
One of the difficulties is in trying to measure the value of the whole discipline, which may be too complex and wide in breadth to take into account. A better approach may be to look at the tangible parts of value created from managing a portfolio of changes.
One of the key values of effectively managing a portfolio of changes is helping the organisation better prioritise the right initiatives, the right sequencing of initiative implementation, and therefore the right resources to support these initiatives. This includes not just the right resource focus and allocation from a project implementation perspective, but also from a business perspective when it comes to change readiness and adoption.
A McKinsey study showed that companies that are better at prioritising resources to support initiatives can reap an average of 40% more value than other companies. Note that this is not ‘up to 40%’ but an ‘average of 40%’. This is a significant finding and shows how much this impacts the value of the company.
How do we calculate this change portfolio financial value?
Step 1 – Calculating the value of the company
One simple way to calculate the value of a company can be calculated by using this simple equation:
Value = Earning after tax x P/E (price to earnings) Ratio
Earnings after tax = This number you should be able to get from Finance, or for public companies, this figure should be available in the published Income Statement.
Price to earnings ratio = There are several ways to get this figure. Market value per share divided by earnings per share. Or if this number is not available you can use the average P/E ratio number of 14 as the average for S&P 500.
Let’s take a few examples.
Your company’s earnings after tax is $100 million. And if your P/E ratio is not available, then the value of the company is $100 million x 14 = $1.4 billion.
Your company’s earnings after tax is $300 million. And if you’re P/E ratio is not available, then the value of the company is $300 million x 14 = $4.2 billion.
Step 2 – Calculating the value of prioritising resources to support your initiative portfolio
In the McKinsey study, the 40% increase in company value was over a 15 year period. Let’s assume this is taking into account the compounded effect of incremental value year in and year out. Using a reverse compounded interest calculator would equate to 2% per year in incremental value.
In the example where the value of company is $1.4 billion.
$1.4 billion x 0.02 (2%) = $28 million
In the example where the value of the company is $4.2 billion
$4.2 billion x 0.02 (2%) = $84 million
You can see now that we are talking about a significant chunk of money. This is because of the increase in the value of the company from making the right decisions in focusing and appropriately resourcing the prioritised set of initiatives and having the right business focus to support these initiatives. Creating the right focus, the right change sequences, the right change ‘packages’, and changes that are ‘bite-sized’ as needed can all contribute to optimised change outcomes.
Resources and organisational energy are also not wasted on initiatives that are less critical and perhaps more likely to fail or achieve less adoption. These then translate to enhanced overall benefit realisation, and therefore improved value creation for the company overall.
This contrasts significantly with the focus on individual projects and the calculation of ROI where change management is viewed as a cost to the business. At a per-project level this may make sense, however, most companies are executing multiple projects at the same time. Sure, you can try and calculate the change management ROI for every project and still not capture the total value. This is because “the sum is greater than its parts” to quote Aristotle.
How do we use this value?
There are many ways to use this financial calculation:
Business leaders who don’t understand the value of managing change across the portfolio and struggle to see the relevance or business benefit of investment in this area
Project portfolio managers who would like to better understand and articulate the ‘prize’ in focusing on change portfolio management beyond the existing project portfolio management focus areas
Operational leaders who would like to understand the value of ‘air traffic control’ of the various initiatives that impact their business units
Change practitioners who have been asked to prove the value of managing across the portfolio and why this is needed across multiple initiatives
Delivering constant changes is a requirement in implementing agile change management. With each iteration, a change is being designed and released as a part of ongoing agile development and project implementation. However, there is little mention in change management literature of how to go about delivering change constantly and be able to achieve optimum change adoption.
Continuous delivery pipeline
The concept of a ‘continuous delivery pipeline’ is a core part of the agile methodology. It refers to having a structured pipeline of continuous changes being released as required by the organisation. The pipeline contains a set of features and changes to be worked on, and the resulting prioritised changes are released when and as needed.
The three components of a continuous delivery pipeline that forms an agile release train include:
Continuous exploration – This is about defining and scoping what needs to be built using human centred design approaches to design the problem that needs to be solved from the user perspective
Continuous integration – This step involves taking those prioritised features from the backlog and investigating further to understand what development work is required to turn them into solutions for the user.
Continuous deployment – This is about turning the completed changes from the staging environment into production, meaning the live product that is ready to be used by the user. After the technical part of the solution is ready to be released, the business then determines when is a good time for this release to go ahead.
The ‘technical side’ of the agile team is fairly well defined in terms of the roles and responsibilities of each member, including project manager, developer, QA/testing, business analyst, business owner, etc. However, the role of the change manager is much less defined and black and white. This does not mean that there is no role for the change manager though. It just means that the agile literature has not well defined the details for the role of the change manager in an agile team. ‘Agile change management’ still has some work to do to make itself better known to other agile team members.
So how does the change manager get ready to deliver a series of constant changes?
Delivering a series of constant changes is no easy feat. The main issue is that most businesses are not designed to face multiple changes, and nor are they designed to face a series of continual changes either.
Change approaches are primarily written for working on one change at a time, and not in a setting where there are continual releases of changes going on. On the other hand, how many organisations do you know that are only facing one change? Or that only deals with one change within a month? This type of stable change environment may have been the norm years ago when the business environment was much more predictable and stable. Hence, using a waterfall project approach was appropriate at the time. Fast-forwarding to the 2020s most organisations are juggling with constant and multiple changes as the norm.
1. Derive a picture of the changes within the continuous delivery pipeline.
Deriving a clear picture of what changes look like within a project is critical. Without this, you will not be able to clearly communicate to your stakeholders what changes are coming down the pipeline.
To create this picture, use a human-centred approach and illustrate what the user will go through throughout the change journey. This is similar to a user journey map. However, a change-focused picture goes beyond just what the user will be going through. It also includes not just person-based changes, but also process, policy, system, governance, reporting and other changes. Outlining these changes will complete the whole picture of what each change release may look like.
A key problem in creating a picture of the changes early on is that the project team may not even know what the solution looks like. And without particular details of every change release and solution design, it may be hard to create this picture.
The recommended approach is to focus on what the outcome could look like versus focusing on various technical or process solutions. This means you may even need to make particular assumptions in defining what these changes look like. For example:
Release 1: Ability to turn recorded customer conversations into text. With this feature, there will be new risk and privacy processes and governance be put in place in the monitoring and storage of customer data.
Release 2: Ability to search for customer conversation history and flag follow up actions required. Specialist roles may be required to audit customer conversation text. Behaviour shifts in proactively checking on customer history and knowing what to look for in trends is critical.
Release 3: Ability to use analytics to predict customer turnover and use this to minimise customer turnover. Significant capability uplift is required to ensure that consultants are able to know how to use analytics to help minimise customer turnover. Analytics capability uplift is also required at operations management, supervisor and team leader levels.
2. Map holistic stakeholder impacts.
In order to implement constant ongoing changes, it is critical to understand holistically what the stakeholders are undergoing across all types of changes and other BAU impacts. Without taking these into account it is not possible to truly understand the capacity of stakeholders and when changes will best ‘stick’ when released.
Some of the items that should be inventoried and mapped include:
Impacts from the current project that you are working on
Other project impacts that affect the stakeholder at the same time as your project, including any benefit realization periods post project implementation
BAU-led initiatives that could include business improvement or quality, and may not classified as ‘funded projects’ per se
Key high work volume periods such as end of financial year, holiday season, etc.
Audits, planning or reviews where additional work volumes are forecasted
It does take investment and effort to collect all these types of data and most change managers do not bother to do this. However, it is not possible to implement a successful change when you do not understand what other changes or work priorities your stakeholders are undergoing during the change process.
It is also important to note that this type of impact data can change constantly and once the data is collected it needs to be verified on a timely basis with any changes and updates reflected over time. Doing this activity manually can be quite cumbersome so we advise using digital tools such as The Change Compass.
The collected data on what stakeholders are undergoing can be significantly valuable. Often stakeholders themselves have not undertaken this exercise to truly understand the change journeys and work priorities added together holistically. They may be surprised by the picture you are presenting to them. At the minimum, they will value this since it shows that you have a deep understanding of what they will be going through and therefore create more stakeholder confidence.
Examples of data visualisation from The Change Compass
3. Sizing and categorising the impacts of changes
After getting a clear picture of holistic change environment that the stakeholders will be undergoing the next step is to analyse the impacts from your project. In analysing the change impacts you should be ascertaining the nature of these change impacts including:
Size of the impact
How long the impacts will last
How much time these impacts translate to
Types of these impacts (e.g. people, process, system, customer, etc.)
To whom the impacts will be on
Quantitatively sizing your impacts makes them concrete and easily understood. Armed with this information you are able to examine to what extent the planned releases are the right ‘size’ for the impacted stakeholder groups. This is another critical part of agile change management. In determining this, the following stakeholder factors are critical:
Capacity bandwidth
Potential overlaps across various impacts either within the same or with other projects or initiatives
Change maturity level and experience with similar changes in the past
Leadership support and other change reinforcement mechanisms
Overall change readiness
Engagement level with the particular change initiative
When you have considered all of these factors you are ready to engage with your project manager, the PMO, and business representatives to assess to what extent the roadmap laid out is effective and will work to maximise the targeted initiative benefits.
4. Business operations routines
Now you understand clearly the change environment of your impacted stakeholders, various changes within yours’ and other initiatives, and the categories of the various change impacts. The next step is to clarify to what extent your impacted business units have the right operational process to receive ongoing changes. This is often a neglected part of agile change management.
More change mature business units have over time developed the right routines and processes to absorb changes, especially ongoing ones. What are some of these?
Effective engagement processes. Engagement processes are not just one-way communication channels. Having effective communications channels such as newsletters and town halls are a minimum for employees to hear about what is coming down the pipeline. Engagement processes include such as effectively choreographed Yammer channels, skip-level meetings (where managers meet with employees 2 levels down), focus group sessions with a small group of select employees, and effective team meetings where information is passed both up and down the chain of command
Effective learning processes. Effective learning processes at a business unit level includes business operations routines whereby employees have individual development plans (from which training plans can be incorporated), ongoing monitoring of development tracking against targets (e.g. completion rates), virtual learning processes (e.g. employee familiarity with virtual ways of self-initiated learning)
Change champion network. Most change champion networks are project-based and therefore have a limited shelf-life. This means that business change champions have a limited time to learn and develop as effective change champions. They also have limited time to practice and experience what it is like to lead and support change. A better design for business units undergoing ongoing changes is to have business unit based change champions that can support a myriad of changes across the board. This flexes their capability. Also, with constant exposure to changes over time, they are able to continuously develop and become better change champions. Organisations that have done this well, have positioned this as a ‘talent pool’ for frontline employees seeking to grow into other challenging roles.
Benefit realisation processes. Tracking and reinforcing benefit realisation is one of the most critical ingredients for success in the impacted business unit. Usually a month after go-live, the project would have already wrapped up and the business is left to continue the rest of the change journey and achieve the targeted benefits. To do this the business unit needs to have clear benefit realisation tracking and reinforcing mechanisms, involving Finance and business leaders. There needs to be constant oversight of how the benefit tracking is trending and leader discussions on resolving any obstacles and providing adequate managerial support to drive the benefit realisation process.
If your impacted business unit lacks one or more of these ingredients, it is critical that you work on this upfront. Highlight to business leaders the risk of not having these ingredients in place within the business. These processes may take significant time and investment to build up. Therefore, factor in the time required to develop these. Often, within the challenges of agile changes, these are left until the end, by which time it is too late to try and establish quickly to support the identified project changes.
