Successful change management relies on having the right metrics to measure progress, gauge impact, and communicate with stakeholders. Moreover, the right metrics can drive continuous improvement and help directly achieve change outcomes. However, not all metrics are beneficial, and some can mislead or fail to meet stakeholder needs, especially when managing change projects. Let’s check out the top change management metrics to avoid and go through examples to take note.
Understanding the Disconnect: Change Managers vs. Business Stakeholders
A significant reason certain change management metrics fall short is the differing perspectives between change managers and business stakeholders. Change managers and change practitioners are trained to view metrics through the lens of change management frameworks and methodologies, focusing on detailed assessments and structured approaches as a part of the change management strategy. These include applying ratings and judgments on aspects such as impact levels indicating levels and areas of impact.
In contrast, business stakeholders prioritize business operations, strategic outcomes, and practical implications. The busy business stakeholder is often looking for practical implications from metrics that can be used to directly drive decision making, meaning “what do I do with this data to improve the ultimate business outcome”.
Of course, different stakeholders have different data needs, and you need to show the right metric to the right type of stakeholder. For example, operations-focused stakeholders expect fairly detailed metrics and internal historical data to understand what that means in terms of organisation, coordination, capacity, and performance perspectives. Senior managers may prefer higher-level data with a focus on strategic impacts, overall progress, and adoption indicators of change success rate.
This disconnect can lead to the use of metrics that do not resonate with or are misunderstood by stakeholders that disrupt change success.
Change managers may leverage metrics that are derived from the various change management documents such impact assessments, training plan or communications plan. Metrics are also often chosen for ease of use and ideally are not overly complicated to execute.
For example, impact assessments typically involve rating stakeholder groups and initiatives on a traffic light system (red, amber, green) based on their impact. While this approach is systematic, it can be problematic for several reasons:
Lack of Sufficient Stakeholder Context: Business stakeholders might not understand the practical implications of these ratings. For instance, an “impact rating per initiative” may not clearly convey what the rating means for day-to-day operations or strategic goals. For example, if an initiative has a red impact rating, stakeholders might not grasp the specific operational changes or strategic adjustments needed, in essence, “what do I do with this?”. So, incorrect usage of data could result in lack of stakeholder engagement.
Misinterpretation of Traffic Light Ratings: The red, amber, green system can be misleading. Stakeholders might interpret red as an indicator of alarm or imminent risk, while green may be seen as a sign that no action is needed. This is because stakeholders are trained to interpret traffic light ratings this way (from the various project/business updates they’ve attended). In reality, red might simply mean high impact, requiring focused attention, and green might indicate a low impact but still require monitoring. For instance, a red rating might indicate significant process changes that need careful management, not necessarily a negative outcome.
Hard to defend ratings if prompted: Business stakeholders may also want to drill into how the ratings are determined, and based on what basis. They may expect a logical data-backed reasoning of how each colour scheme is determined. If a rating is based on an overall ‘personal judgment’ this may be hard to defend infront of a group of stakeholders.
Examples of Potentially Misleading Metrics
Certain metrics, although straightforward, can be easily misinterpreted and fail to provide a realistic picture of change impacts as a part of effective change management. Often these are selected because they are easy to report on. However, easy, make not give you the outcome you are looking for.
Number of Go-Lives: Tracking the number of Go-Lives over time might seem like an effective way to represent change volume. However, the most significant impacts on people given time often occur before or after the Go-Live date. For example, the preparation and training phase before Go-Live and the adoption phase afterward are critical periods that this metric overlooks. A Go-Live date might indicate a milestone but not the challenges, progress or impacts faced during the implementation phase.
Number of Activities Implemented: Similar to Go-Lives, this metric focuses on quantity rather than quality. Simply counting the number of activities does not account for their effectiveness or the actual change they drive within the organisation. For example, reporting that 50 training sessions were conducted does not reveal whether employees found them helpful or if they led to improved performance.
Number of impacts or stakeholders impacted: Again, using a numerical way to indicate progress can be very misleading, or unmeaningful. This is because it may be ‘interesting’ but with no real action for your stakeholder to take in order to somehow lead to a better overall change outcome. If metrics do not result in some kind of action, then over time it will not shape your change(s) toward the targeted outcomes. Or worse, your stakeholders may lose interest and lose confidence in the strategic impact of these metrics.
Another common way to report change metrics is to use the number of impacts or number of stakeholders impacted by the organizational change. This can be in terms of the following:
Number of divisions impacted
Number of stakeholder groups impacted
Number of employees impacted
Number of initiatives per division/stakeholder
Metrics That May Be Too Operational
Metrics that are overly operational can fail to capture meaningful progress or adoption. Perhaps if the metric are for reporting within the Change Management team that may be OK. However, when you are showing metrics to stakeholders, a different set of expectations should be cast.
If you are presenting metrics to senior managers, you need to ensure that they hit the mark for that audience group. If the group is more interested in strategic impact, and higher level progress outcomes, you need to tailor accordingly.
Examples of metrics that may be too operational include:
Number of Communications Sent: This metric measures activity but not effectiveness. Sending numerous emails or messages does not guarantee that the message is received, understood, or acted upon by stakeholders. For instance, stakeholders might receive 100 emails, but if the content is unclear, the communication effort is wasted. Or worse, the emails may not even have been read.
Number of Training Sessions Attended: This one is a classic. While training is crucial, the number of sessions attended does not necessarily reflect the attendees’ understanding, engagement, or the practical application of the training. For example, employees might attend training but not apply the new skills if the training is not relevant to their roles for various reasons.
Number of workshops/meetings: Another way of articulating the change management progress in terms of activities is the number of workshops or meetings conducted with stakeholders including focus groups to indicate employee engagement. Again, this may be good to track within the change management team. However, presenting this metric to stakeholders may not be appropriate as it may not meet their needs nor indicate change management success.
Number of changes: This may be a common way to report on changes planned, but it doesn’t really inform the extent of the change. One change can be significantly impactful whilst another does not have major stakeholder impacts and are more system impacts. Listing number of changes may be deceiving or misleading. This kind of data may not get you the level of acceptance targeted.
The way metrics are presented is just as important as the metrics themselves. Poor visualization can lead to misinterpretation, confusion, and misguided decisions. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:
Ineffective Use of Pie Charts
Pie charts can be misleading when used to show data points that are not significantly different. For example, using a pie chart to represent the percentage of divisions impacted by a change might not effectively communicate the nuances of the impact if the differences between the divisions are minimal. A pie chart showing 45%, 30%, and 25% might not convey the critical differences in impact levels among divisions.
Misleading Traffic Light Ratings
Using red, amber, and green to indicate high, medium, and low impacts can send the wrong message. Stakeholders might associate these colours with good and bad outcomes rather than understanding the actual levels of impact. Stakeholder may be used to interpreting these in the context of their usual project or business updates where red indicated alarm and ‘bad’. This can lead to unnecessary alarm or complacency. For instance, a green rating might suggest no need for action, while in reality, it might require ongoing monitoring.
Overuse of Colours
Using too many colours in charts and graphs can overwhelm stakeholders, making it difficult to discern the key message. Using colours in data visualisation can be two-edged sword. Colour can effectively point your stakeholders are the area where you want them to focus on. But, too many colours can lose your audience. A cluttered visual can obscure the critical data points and lead to misinterpretation. For example, a graph with ten different colours can confuse stakeholders about which data points are most important.
Data visualisation tools are also important. A lot of people use Power BI which works for a foundational level of charts. For tailored charts, specifically designed to to influence stakeholders to clearly see certain angles of risks and opportunities leverage tools such as Change Compass.
Practical Takeaways for Senior Change Managers
To ensure that change management metrics are effective and take into account best practices practices, consider the following practical takeaways:
Align Metrics with Key Stakeholder Perspectives
Understand Stakeholder Priorities: Engage with stakeholders to understand their business goals, priorities and concerns. Tailor your metrics to address these aspects directly. For example, if stakeholders are concerned about operational efficiency, focus on metrics that reflect improvements in this area.
Use Business Language: Frame your metrics in a way that resonates with business stakeholders. Avoid change management jargon and reference, and ensure that the implications of the metrics are clear and actionable. For example, instead of using technical terms, explain how the metrics impact business outcomes. Think in terms of business activities, milestones, busy periods, and capacity challenges.
Focus on Meaningful Metrics
Measure Outcomes, Not Just Activities: Change leaders should prioritize metrics that reflect the outcomes and impacts of change indicate level of knowledge, rather than just the activities performed as a part of change management KPIs. For example, instead of counting the total number of employees attending change management training sessions, measure the improvement in employee performance or knowledge retention post-training.
Example: Instead of reporting that 100 employees attended training sessions, report that 85% of attendees showed improved performance in their roles after training, or that certain level of competencies were gained. Note that quantifiable metrics have more impact on the audience.
Track Engagement and Adoption: Monitor metrics that indicate the level of engagement and adoption among stakeholders or their perception of the change. This could include surveys, feedback forms, or direct measures of behaviour change and the overall success rate of the change.
Example: Use post-training surveys to measure employee confidence in applying new skills or managerial rating of application of learnt skills rather than employee satisfaction of the training sessions using satisfaction scores. Track the percentage of employees who actively use new tools or processes introduced during the change.
Example: Instead of reporting that 100 employees attended training sessions, report that 85% of attendees showed improved performance in their roles after training, or that certain level of competencies were gained.
Example: Use post-training surveys to measure employee confidence in applying new skills or managerial rating of application of learnt skills. Track the percentage of employees who actively use new tools or processes introduced during the change.
Improve Metric Visualization
Simplify Visuals: Use clear, simple visuals that highlight the key messages. Avoid clutter and ensure that the most important data points stand out.
Example: Use bar charts or line graphs to show trends over time rather than pie charts that can be harder to interpret.
Contextualize Data: Provide context for the data to help stakeholders understand the significance. For example, instead of just showing the number of Go-Lives, explain what each Go-Live entails and its expected impact on operations. Or better, focus on showing the varying levels of impact on different stakeholders across time within the initiative.
Example: Accompany a Go-Live count with a visual showing the varying impact level of various implementation activities of the changes.
Example: Use bar charts or line graphs to show trends over time rather than pie charts that can be harder to interpret.
Example: Accompany a Go-Live count with a visual showing the varying impact level of various implementation activities of the changes.
Narrative Approach: Combine metrics with a narrative that explains the story behind the numbers as a part of the change management process. This can help stakeholders understand the broader context and implications.
Example: Instead of presenting raw data, provide a summary that explains key trends, successes, and areas needing attention.
Educate your stakeholders: Depending on stakeholder needs you may need to take them on a phased approach to gradually educate them on change management metrics and how you ultimately want them to drive the outcomes.
Example: You may start the education process to focus on more simplistic and easy-to-understand measures, and as your stakeholders are more change-mature, move to drill into more detailed metrics that explain the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to drive outcome success.
Continuously improvement: Provide regular updates on key metrics and adjust them based on feedback from stakeholders. Continuous communication ensures that everyone remains aligned and informed.
Example: Hold monthly review meetings with stakeholders to discuss the latest metrics, address concerns, and adjust strategies as needed.
Example: Instead of presenting raw data, provide a summary that explains key trends, successes, and areas needing attention.
Example: You may start the education process to focus on more simplistic and easy-to-understand measures, and as your stakeholders are more change-mature, move to drill into more detailed metrics that explain the ‘why’ and ‘how’ to drive outcome success.
Example: Hold monthly review meetings with stakeholders to discuss the latest metrics, address concerns, and adjust strategies as needed.
Examples of Effective Metrics
Employee Adoption and Engagement
Percentage of Employees Adopting New Process/System: This metric measures the rate at which employees are using new processes or systems introduced during the change. High adoption rates indicate successful integration.
Implementation: Use software usage analytics or surveys to track tool adoption rates.
Visualization: A graph showing adoption rates over time.
Employee Feedback Scores: Collect feedback on change initiatives through surveys or stakeholder ratings to measure sentiment/feedback and identify areas for improvement.
Implementation: Conduct regular surveys asking employees about their experience with the change process. Do note that depending on the change you may expect negative feedback due to the nature of the change itself (vs the way it was implemented).
Visualization: Bar/Line charts comparing feedback scores across different departments or time periods. Bar/Line charts are the standard go-to for data visualisation. They are easy to understand and interpret.
Implementation: Use software usage analytics or surveys to track tool adoption rates.
Visualization: A graph showing adoption rates over time.
Implementation: Conduct regular surveys asking employees about their experience with the change implementation process. Do note that depending on the change you may expect negative feedback due to the nature of the change itself (vs the way it was implemented).
Visualization: Bar/Line charts comparing feedback scores across different departments or time periods. Bar/Line charts are the standard go-to for data visualisation. They are easy to understand and interpret.
Impact on Business Outcomes
Improvement in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Track changes in KPIs that are directly impacted by the change initiatives, such as productivity, customer satisfaction, customer experience, improvement in process inconsistencies or financial performance.
Implementation: Identify relevant KPIs and measure their performance before and after change initiatives.
Visualization: Use line/bar graphs to show trends in KPI performance over time.
Operational Efficiency Metrics: Measure improvements in operational processes, such as reduced cycle times, error rates, or cost savings.
Implementation: Track specific operational metrics relevant to the change initiatives.
Visualization: Bar charts or heatmaps showing improvements in efficiency metrics across different operational areas.
Implementation: Identify relevant KPIs and measure their performance before and after change initiatives.
Visualization: Use line/bar graphs to show trends in KPI performance over time.
Implementation: Track specific operational metrics relevant to the change initiatives.
Visualization: Bar charts or heatmaps showing improvements in efficiency metrics across different operational areas.
Change management effectiveness requires metrics that not only measure progress but also resonate with business stakeholders and accurately reflect the impact of change initiatives. They should provide valuable insights. Avoiding common pitfalls such as relying on easily misinterpreted or overly operational metrics is crucial. By aligning metrics with stakeholder perspectives, focusing on meaningful outcomes, improving visualization, and communicating effectively, senior change and transformation professionals can ensure that their metrics truly support the success of their change initiatives.
The top change management metrics to avoid are those that fail to provide clear, actionable insights to business stakeholders. By understanding and addressing the disconnect between change managers and business stakeholders, and by prioritizing metrics that truly reflect the impact and progress of change, you can drive more effective and successful change management efforts by influencing your stakeholders in your organisation.
As a next step, Chat with us if you would like to discuss more about leveraging AI and technology to generate high-impact change management metrics and data for your stakeholders, both at project and portfolio levels, using data visualisation tools.
Have you ever wondered why change management deliverables as a part of the overall OCM solution are structured and sequenced the way they are in effective change management plans?
Organisational change management deliverables are defined as the data that is put in use in every activity in a change-management. Besides activities, deliverables can form an integral part of any change management project.
There is an inherent logical flow from which change deliverables feed into the next. This means that subpar quality in the deliverable earlier on happens if the work is inadequately carried out. Also, this will likely flow into the rest of the deliverables.
For the change management team, change management deliverables start out very high-level. Earlier in the project development lifecycle, there is a lot of unknown details which stops you from conducting detailed stakeholder management assessment and a communication plan. Moreover, there are lots of questions that cannot be answered about the nature of the change, what the new processes are, and training needs. More details presents itself as the project progresses through each phase. Therefore, the change practitioner is able to populate and document various details, including what the change means and how stakeholders will be impacted (i.e. the change impact assessment).
Eventually, each change deliverable contributes to the next, resulting in a detailed change plan. The change plan is a culmination of a detailed understanding. Also, it’s an assessment of the impacted stakeholders and what the changes will mean to them. Therefore, the respective change interventions within the change initiative that are critical to transition these key stakeholders from the current to future state. Change management communication, change readiness assessment and stakeholder engagement plan as well as effective training plan also form a core part of the change plan.
Along with the change management process as a part of the change strategy, one should create a system for managing scope of the change. Good project managers apply these components effectively to ensure project success through careful planning. Whether it’s a sudden change of personnel, new technology changes, change resistance or an unexpectedly poor quarter; Change managers should be adaptable enough to conduct risk assessment to apply the appropriate mitigations and changes to your plan to accommodate your company’s new needs.
Change management functions encompass planning, implementation, and monitoring of organizational changes. The change process ensures smooth transitions by managing effective communication of change impact, training efforts, and support to ensure positive outcomes. Additionally, it assesses impacts and adapts strategies into change management tasks to minimize resistance, ultimately fostering a culture that embraces change for improved overall performance and employee satisfaction.
Change and transformation initiatives rarely fail for lack of strategy or technical expertise – they falter when leaders underestimate the emotional dimension of change. For seasoned professionals driving organization-wide transformation, understanding how to engage the hearts and minds of employees is the difference between short-lived compliance and deep, sustainable commitment.
The Power of Emotions in Motivating Change
To motivate significant change, it is essential to go beyond the rational case and touch the hearts of employees by appealing to what truly matters to them and what they feel strongly about. Research consistently shows emotionally intelligent leaders are more successful at driving change. One study notes that leaders with high EI are more likely to drive successful change initiatives than those with lower emotional awareness. Leaders who understand their own emotions and those of their teams can inspire, align, and energize people far more effectively than leaders relying solely on logic and process.
Why Emotional Resonance Is Essential
People are moved to action by what they care about. Logic justifies, but emotion compels action. Employees must see the personal significance of change – how it relates to their values, goals, and hopes.
Emotions shape perception of risk and opportunity. Change often triggers uncertainty and ambiguity, which are interpreted emotionally before logically.
Emotional connection breeds trust and reduces resistance. Employees are more open to change when they feel understood and valued by leaders they trust.
Infusing the Change Journey with a Range of Emotions
Rather than viewing negative emotions as obstacles and positive emotions as side effects, the most effective leaders intentionally inject a spectrum of emotions across the change journey to drive engagement and build resilience.
Key emotions to strategically leverage include:
Excitement: To create early momentum and interest.
Curiosity: To encourage exploration, learning, and openness to new ideas.
Hope: To sustain long-term belief in the value and attainability of change.
Contentment and Relief: To mark progress, celebrate milestones, and reduce fatigue.
Amusement and Awe: To humanize the process, provide psychological relief, and highlight significant achievements or breakthroughs.
Each phase of change management – from initial awareness to adoption and reinforcement – presents opportunities to leverage different emotions that collectively build engagement and adaptability.
Example Applications
Kick-off communications: Stir excitement and curiosity by spotlighting new opportunities, challenges, and the bigger “why.”
Development stages: Use hope and inclusion, showing progress and involving teams in solution-finding.
Launch and transition: Celebrate success, recognize effort, and use amusement (e.g., gamified elements) to keep spirits high amidst disruption.
Emotions as a Strategic Lever for Change Leaders
Transformational leaders understand that orchestrating change means intentionally managing and harnessing emotions, not suppressing or ignoring them. By tuning into emotional undercurrents, leaders can:
Detect subtle signs of resistance or fatigue early.
Celebrate emotional wins, not just operational ones.
Adapt messages and interventions to journey stages and emotional climate.
Model openness, normalizing emotional conversations within professional spaces.
Emotional intelligence is thus not a “soft” skill, but a strategic lever – “a must-have asset for those leading change initiatives,” as highlighted in leading change management research.
Managing and Addressing Negative Emotions to Sustain Change
Leading successful organizational transformation requires more than amplifying positive emotions; it necessitates the proactive recognition and management of negative emotions that naturally surface during times of change. For senior change and transformation professionals, skilfully navigating this emotional terrain is fundamental to minimizing resistance, reducing risk, and supporting sustainable behaviour change.
Negative Emotions: Predictable, Powerful, and Manageable
Significant change – even when ultimately beneficial – disrupts established routines, identity, and psychological safety. Anxiety, fear, stress, anger, guilt, disappointment, and similar emotions are not anomalies; they are predictable responses rooted in uncertainty and perceived loss. Ignoring or dismissing these emotions increases the likelihood of disengagement, resistance, or project failure.
Why Negative Emotions Matter
Change is experienced subjectively. Even positive shifts generate discomfort as people relinquish familiarity and control.
Unaddressed negative emotions magnify resistance. If left unmanaged, anxiety and fear can evolve into cynicism, mistrust, or apathy.
Negative emotions can serve as signals. They often highlight real obstacles (lack of understanding, perceived injustice, capacity constraints) that demand attention.
Core Approaches to Managing Negative Emotions
Surface and Validate Emotions Early
Encourage open dialogue about fears, frustrations, and uncertainties.
Normalize emotional reactions by acknowledging that these are shared and expected responses to change.
Create Psychological Safety
Foster an environment where employees feel safe expressing concern and doubt without fear of retribution.
Equip managers with tools and language to hold empathetic conversations and demonstrate genuine care.
Targeted Communication and Transparency
Address the why behind change – and spell out the risks of staying the same as well as the intended benefits.
Clarify what is not changing to provide anchors of stability.
Share updates honestly; trust is maintained by admitting what is unknown or still evolving.
Provide Resources for Coping and Adjustment
Offer training and practical support to build the competence and confidence needed to adapt.
Promote peer support networks and employee assistance programs focused on emotional well-being.
Monitor and Respond to Hot Spots
Use quantitative (pulse surveys, sentiment analysis) and qualitative (focus groups, direct feedback) methods to identify departments or groups experiencing heightened stress, anger, or disengagement.
Intervene promptly: tailor strategies (coaching, workload adjustment, additional support) to the specific root causes surfaced.
Practical Example: Driving Compliance Change
Consider a regulatory compliance initiative requiring strict behavioural shifts. Some employees may react with resistance, resentment, or guilt over past practices. The leader’s role is to:
Clearly communicate the rationale (“why this matters”), using real-world consequences rather than just abstract directives.
Create opportunities for employees to voice concerns, ask questions, and seek clarification.
Provide a safe pathway for adaptation – acknowledging initial frustration while offering positive reinforcement and practical support as new behaviours are adopted.
Recognize and celebrate progress, even when small, helping shift the emotional story from “mandated pain” to “shared achievement” over time.
Leveraging Negative Emotions as Catalysts
At times, driving behaviour change may involve activating negative emotions briefly to disrupt complacency and spur action. For example:
Highlighting risks and consequences can use fear productively to achieve urgency.
Allowing discomfort during difficult reflections (e.g., on ethical or compliance gaps) to motivate honest self-appraisal and commitment to new standards.
However, expert leaders then quickly pivot towards hope, support, and a shared vision, ensuring negative emotions serve as catalysts rather than chronic obstacles.
The Role of Senior Leaders: Empathy, Agency, and Boundaries
Senior leaders modelling vulnerability and self-regulation are essential. They:
Empathize openly with teams facing anxiety, stress, or loss.
Set clear boundaries for expected behaviours while also communicating flexibility in adaptation paths.
Use their own emotional intelligence to intervene early – elevating what’s working and constructively addressing blocks.
Measuring and Managing Emotional Impact
Regularly track employee sentiment to spot growing pockets of overwhelm or anger.
Use behavioural markers (e.g., engagement levels, change adoption rates, incident reports) to triangulate emotional health.
Deploy targeted interventions – adjusting timelines, providing additional resources, or recalibrating expectations – to mitigate chronic negative emotional load.
As discussed, negative emotions are not inherently “bad.” When surfaced, addressed, and used purposefully, they become signals and even agents of necessary transformation.
Monitoring Emotional Signals, Using Data, and Modulating Change for Sustainable Success
Delivering transformation at scale isn’t just a matter of visionary leadership and responsive management – it requires robust, ongoing mechanisms to listen to, measure, and respond to the emotional currents within your organization. In a world where the pace, complexity, and uncertainty of change are unrelenting, senior change and transformation professionals must treat emotional management as an integrated, data-driven discipline.
Systematically Monitoring Employee Sentiment
Modern change leadership goes beyond intuition and anecdotal evidence. To ensure lasting adoption and minimize emotional fatigue, organizations must deliberately monitor employee sentiment throughout the change journey. This involves using both qualitative and quantitative approaches:
Quantitative Tools
Pulse Surveys: These regular, short surveys quickly capture shifting moods and concerns. Questions can focus on confidence in the change, perceived impact, stress levels, and sense of involvement.
Sentiment Analysis: Analysing words and phrases in internal communications (e.g., survey responses, emails, chat forums) can provide a broader, real-time picture of organizational mood.
Engagement Metrics: Analysing participation rates in change-related forums, training modules, and events offers clues to energy, buy-in, and resistance.
Qualitative Signals
Focus Groups and Open Forums: Small-group discussions allow deeper exploration of emotional drivers, uncovering underlying issues not surfaced in surveys.
Leader Check-Ins: Regular, open conversations between managers and team members provide space for direct feedback, concerns, and suggestions.
Observation of Behaviours: Changes in productivity, absenteeism, collaboration, or informal communication patterns can signal rising stress or disengagement.
These monitoring tools aren’t just diagnostic; they are intervention triggers, providing data to adjust the pace, content, and support structure of your change efforts.
Using Data to Manage Change Stress and Adapt Strategy
The volume, velocity, and cumulative impact of simultaneous change initiatives (often called “change saturation”) are major contributors to employee stress and emotional overload. Without hard data, leaders risk pushing teams past breaking point or missing signs of silent disengagement. With data, leaders can:
Identify At-Risk Groups: Data might reveal a specific business unit showing sharp increases in stress or declines in engagement, warranting targeted support or pacing adjustments.
Monitor Change Readiness: By tracking readiness markers (self-assessed confidence, perceived adequacy of training, clarity of roles), leaders spot where additional communication or upskilling is needed.
Triangulate Qualitative and Quantitative Insights: Married together, these data sources validate concerns and prevent rash conclusions from isolated anecdotes.
Practical actions could include:
Staggering change roll-outs for overloaded teams.
Providing extra resources or temporary relief for units under strain.
Adjusting expectations or timelines when signs of emotional burnout emerge.
Moderating the Volume of Change
It is now well-established that organizations don’t fail from “change incapacity” but from unmanaged change saturation. Leaders must make strategic decisions about how much change the organization, and specific groups, can absorb at once. This means:
Maintaining a Change Portfolio View: Map all concurrent changes affecting each employee group to avoid overlap and collision.
Pausing or Sequencing Initiatives: Delay less urgent projects if sentiment or adoption data suggest people are stretched too thin.
Prioritizing High-Impact Efforts: Focus energy on the few changes that truly matter, reducing “noise” and amplifying clarity.
Deliberate modulation of change volume – supported by real-time emotional and performance feedback – ensures that energy and positivity are not drowned out by chronic overwhelm.
Leveraging Emotional Intelligence – The Leader’s Ongoing Responsibility
Great change leaders constantly model emotional transparency, empathy, and resilience. But they also harness data and employee signals to:
Acknowledge All Emotions: Routinely communicate about both positive and negative experiences, recognizing the reality of stress, pride, frustration, and hope within the journey.
Elevate Successes and Learnings: Celebrate milestones publicly and use stories of difficulty overcome to build confidence and shared identity.
Recalibrate Quickly: Show willingness to adjust approach based on feedback, which builds psychological safety and trust.
In this way, leaders shape not just the process but the collective emotional journey – moving the organization from mere compliance to ownership and advocacy.
Behavioural Signals: Tracking Readiness and Adoption
Emotional monitoring must be paired with vigilant observation of behavioural adoption. The ultimate goal is not just feeling better about change, but actually embedding new ways of working. Leaders should:
Track participation rates in new processes, training, or systems.
Observe peer-to-peer advocacy – do employees champion the change organically?
Routinely assess performance metrics and qualitative feedback for signs of embedded change or reversion to old habits.
Where behavioural adoption lags, revisit the emotional journey – are people experiencing unresolved anxiety, lack of hope, insufficient relief, or overly prolonged stress?
The Emotional Science of Lasting Change
Seasoned change and transformation professionals know that successful change is as much an emotional journey as it is a strategic or operational one. Organizations that put emotional monitoring, data-driven adaptation, and emotionally intelligent leadership at the core of their change efforts improve not just adoption rates, but employee well-being and long-term resilience.
By appealing to what matters most, systematically addressing and harnessing the full spectrum of emotions, leveraging both human insight and hard data, and moderating the pace and load of change, leaders create a climate where people aren’t just surviving change – they’re thriving through it.
This is the new mandate for transformational leadership: bring science and heart together, and make emotions a central lever of lasting change.
Transformation and change professionals often find themselves in the position of defending the value of change management. Despite the critical role that change management plays in ensuring successful project outcomes, many stakeholders remain sceptical. Some view it as a discretionary cost rather than an essential function. Many change management centres of excellences have faced the axe or at least been downsized.
This scepticism can be exacerbated by comments that dismisses roles such as change managers as unnecessary. In Australia, there are even comments by a politician that positions such as change manager “do nothing to improve the lives of everyday Australians”. The context of this comment was targeting positions related cultural, diversity and inclusions advisors, along the same lines as that driven by Trump in the United States. This has upset a lot of change professionals as you can imagine.
To counter this, Change Management Centres of Excellence (CoEs) must move beyond advocacy and education to proactively demonstrate their tangible value. Let’s explore practical approaches to proving the value of change management, ensuring its sustained recognition and investment.
1. Leverage Empirical Research to Support Your Case
There is substantial research demonstrating that change management interventions lead to improved project outcomes. Change practitioners can use these studies as evidence to substantiate their value. For example:
Prosci Research has consistently shown that projects with excellent change management are significantly more likely to achieve their objectives compared to those with poor change management. According to the Best Practices in Change Management study, 88% of participants with excellent change management met or exceeded objectives, while only 13% of those with poor change management met or exceeded objectives. This means that projects with excellent change management were approximately seven times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management (Source).
Even implementing fair change management practices can lead to a threefold improvement in project outcomes (Source).
McKinsey found that transformation initiatives are 5.8 times more successful if CEOs communicate a compelling change story, and 6.3 times more successful when leaders share messages about change efforts with the rest of the organisation (Source).
By framing change management as an evidence-based discipline, Change CoEs can strengthen their credibility and influence senior stakeholders. Furthermore, sharing industry benchmarks and case studies showcasing successful change management implementations can add weight to the argument.
2. Calculate the Financial Value of Managing a Change Portfolio
Executives prioritize financial metrics, making it essential to quantify the financial impact of change management. This article How to calculate the financial value of managing a change portfolio provides a structured approach to calculating the financial value of managing a change portfolio. Some key financial considerations include:
Productivity Gains: Effective change management reduces employee resistance and increases adoption rates, leading to quicker realization of benefits. For instance, if a new system is introduced, strong change management ensures employees use it efficiently, eliminating productivity dips.
Cost Avoidance: Poorly managed change efforts can lead to rework, delays, and even project failures, incurring significant costs. For example, a failed system implementation due to lack of change management could require millions in additional investments to correct issues and retrain employees.
Revenue Acceleration: When changes are adopted swiftly and efficiently, organisations can capitalize on new opportunities faster. In industries such as retail, banking, and technology, time-to-market is critical. The faster employees and customers adapt to new changes, the sooner the organisation can generate revenue from those changes.
Risk Mitigation: Resistance and poor change adoption can lead to compliance risks, reputational damage, and disengagement, all of which have financial implications. A compliance failure due to lack of engagement in a new regulatory process could lead to fines and reputational loss.
To make this more tangible, Change CoEs should create financial models that quantify the cost of failed change initiatives versus successful ones. They can also track and report savings from avoided risks and improved efficiency, linking these directly to the organisation’s bottom line.
3. Demonstrate Value Through Behaviour Change
One of the most effective ways to prove the impact of change management is by tracking behaviour change. Change is not successful unless employees adopt new ways of working, and this can be measured using:
Adoption Metrics: Track usage rates of new systems, tools, or processes. For instance, if a company implements a new CRM system, measuring login frequency, data entry consistency, and feature utilization can indicate successful adoption.
Performance Data: Compare key performance indicators (KPIs) before and after change implementation. If a new customer service protocol is introduced, tracking customer satisfaction scores and response times will provide tangible insights into its effectiveness.
Employee Surveys: Gauge sentiment and readiness for change. Pulse surveys can reveal how confident employees feel about a transformation and whether they understand its purpose and benefits.
Stakeholder Feedback: Capture qualitative insights from leaders and frontline employees. Executives often rely on direct feedback from managers to gauge whether changes are being embraced or resisted.
By presenting a clear narrative that links change management efforts to observable behaviour shifts, Change CoEs can make their value more tangible. It is also beneficial to conduct longitudinal studies, tracking behaviour change over time to ensure sustained impact.
Imagine being able to present a set of behaviour metrics that are forward looking measures for benefit realisation. This can position favourably the tangible value of change management activities and approaches.
Customer Experience Improvements: Measure customer satisfaction before and after change initiatives. If a change initiative improves customer interactions, metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and retention rates will reflect its impact.
Employee Engagement and Retention: Effective change management reduces uncertainty and anxiety, leading to better engagement and lower attrition. Organisations that manage change well see lower absenteeism and stronger workforce commitment.
Organisational Agility: Organisations with strong change management capabilities adapt faster to market disruptions. Companies that successfully embed change management in their DNA are more resilient during economic downturns or competitive shifts.
Cultural Transformation: Change management plays a key role in shaping corporate culture, which influences long-term business success. For example, embedding a culture of continuous learning can make future change initiatives easier to implement.
By framing change management as a driver of strategic outcomes, rather than just an operational function, Change CoEs can enhance their perceived value.
5. Position change as a key part of risk management
Demonstrating the value of change management through risk management is a powerful approach for the Change CoE. By highlighting how effective change management mitigates various risks associated with organisational change, you can justify its importance and secure necessary support and resources.
This is particularly useful and important for the financial services sector where risk is now the front and centre of attention for most senior leaders, with the increasingly intense regulatory environment and scrutiny by regulators.
Risk in Change
Change initiatives inherently carry risks that can impact an organisation’s operations, culture, and bottom line. Effective change management helps identify and address these risks proactively. By implementing a robust change risk management framework, organisations can adapt their overall risk management strategies to cover change-related risks throughout the project lifecycle. This approach allows for early identification of potential obstacles, enabling timely interventions and increasing the likelihood of successful change implementation.
Delivery Risk
Change management plays a crucial role in mitigating delivery risks associated with project implementation. While project managers typically focus on schedule, cost, and quality risks, change managers can identify and manage risks that are delivered into the business as a result of the change. By working closely with project managers, change professionals can introduce processes to minimize the potential business impact of these delivered risks during project delivery. This collaboration ensures that the project not only delivers the required change but does so with minimal disruption to the organisation.
Quantifying Risk Mitigation
To further demonstrate the value of change management, it’s essential to quantify its contribution to risk mitigation. By adapting the organisation’s risk assessment matrix or tools, change managers can determine the probability and potential impact of each identified risk. This analysis allows for prioritization of risks and implementation of appropriate mitigation strategies.
By tracking how change management interventions reduce the likelihood or impact of these risks, you can provide tangible evidence of its value to senior leadership. By framing change management as a critical component of risk management, you can shift the conversation from justifying its existence to showcasing its indispensable role in ensuring successful organisational transformations. This not only demonstrates the value of change management but also aligns it with broader organisational goals of risk reduction and strategic success.
6. Proactively Measure and Track Value Delivery
Tracking and reporting the tangible value created by change management is essential. Organisations frequently undergo leadership transitions, and new decision-makers may question the need for a Change CoE. A well-documented history of impact ensures continuity and ongoing investment.
McKinsey research indicated that Transformations that provide both initiative-level and program-level views of progress through relevant metrics are 7.3 times more likely to succeed (Source).
To achieve this:
Develop a Change Management Dashboard: Use KPIs to track adoption rates, employee readiness, and impact on business metrics.
Create Case Studies: Document success stories with before-and-after comparisons. Case studies should include challenges, change management interventions, and final outcomes.
Conduct Quarterly Impact Reviews: Regularly present insights to senior leaders. Demonstrating trends and ongoing improvements ensures continued executive buy-in.
Link Change Efforts to Strategic Priorities: Show how change management enables key business goals, such as revenue growth, market expansion, or operational efficiency.
7. Shift from Education to Results-Driven Influence
While stakeholder education is important, it has limitations. Many executives have preconceived notions about change management. Rather than relying solely on relationship-building, focus on delivering results that speak for themselves. Key strategies include:
Pilot Programs: Run small-scale change initiatives with measurable impact. If an executive is sceptical, a successful pilot can turn them into an advocate. It is highly unlikely that executives will not want to see metrics that indicate how effective a change initiative is progressing.
Strategic Partnerships: Align with key business units to co-own change success. Partnering with Finance, HR, Risk, Operations and IT leaders can reinforce the business value of change management.
Agile Change Management: Deliver incremental wins to showcase immediate value. Iterative, feedback-driven approaches ensure continuous improvement and visibility.
Change management professionals must move beyond justification and actively prove their worth. By leveraging empirical research, financial calculations, behaviour tracking, alternative value measures, and proactive reporting, Change CoEs can secure their place as indispensable business functions. In a world where scepticism towards roles like change management persists, the best defence is a compelling, evidence-based demonstration of impact.
Change management is often seen as a ‘soft’ discipline that is more an ‘art’ than science. However, successful change management, like managing a business, relies on having the right data to understand if the journey is going in the right direction toward change adoption. The data can inform whether the objectives will be achieved or not.
Data science has emerged to be one of the most sought-after skills in the marketplace at the moment. This is not a surprise because data is what powers and drives our digital economy. Data has the power to make or break companies. Companies that leverages data can significant improve customer experiences, improve efficiency, improve revenue, etc. In fact all facets of how a company is run can benefit from data science. In this article, we explore practical data science techniques that organizations can use to improve change outcomes and achieve their goals more effectively.
Improved decision making
One of the significant benefits of using data science in change management is the ability to make informed decisions. Data science techniques, such as predictive analytics and statistical analysis, allow organizations to extract insights from data that would be almost impossible to detect or analyse manually. This enables organizations to make data-driven decisions that are supported by empirical evidence rather than intuition or guesswork.
Increased Efficiency
Data science can help streamline the change management process and make it more efficient. By automating repetitive tasks, such as data collection, cleaning, and analysis, organizations can free up resources and focus on more critical aspects of change management. Moreover, data science can provide real-time updates and feedback, making it easier for organizations to track progress, identify bottlenecks, and adjust the change management plan accordingly.
Improved Accuracy
Data science techniques can improve the accuracy of change management efforts by removing bias and subjectivity from decision-making processes. By relying on empirical evidence, data science enables organizations to make decisions based on objective facts rather than personal opinions or biases. This can help reduce the risk of errors and ensure that change management efforts are based on the most accurate and reliable data available.
Better Risk Management
Data science can help organizations identify potential risks and develop contingency plans to mitigate those risks. Predictive analytics can be used to forecast the impact of change management efforts and identify potential risks that may arise during the transition. For example, change impacts across multiple initiatives against seasonal operations workload peaks and troughs.
Enhanced Communication
Data science can help facilitate better communication and collaboration between stakeholders involved in the change management process. By presenting data in a visual format, such as graphs, charts, and maps, data science can make complex information more accessible and understandable to all stakeholders. This can help ensure that everyone involved in the change management process has a clear understanding of the goals, objectives, and progress of the transition.
Key data science approaches in change management
Conduct a Data Audit
Before embarking on any change management initiative, it’s essential to conduct a data audit to ensure that the data being used is accurate, complete, and consistent. For example, data related to the current status or the baseline, before change takes place. A data audit involves identifying data sources, reviewing data quality, and creating a data inventory. This can help organizations identify gaps in data and ensure that data is available to support the change management process. This includes any impacted stakeholder status or operational data.
During a data audit, change managers should ask themselves the following questions:
What data sources from change leaders and key stakeholders do we need to support the change management process?
Is the data we are using accurate and reliable?
Are there any gaps in our data inventory?
What data do we need to collect to support our change management initiatives, including measurable impact data?
Using Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics is a valuable data science technique that can be used to forecast the impact of change management initiatives. Predictive analytics involves using historical data to build models that can predict the future impact of change management initiatives. This can help organizations identify potential risks and develop proactive strategies to mitigate those risks.
Change managers can use predictive analytics to answer the following questions:
What is the expected impact of our change management initiatives?
What are the potential risks associated with our change management initiatives?
What proactive strategies can we implement to mitigate those risks?
How can we use predictive analytics to optimize the change management process?
Leveraging Business Intelligence
Business intelligence is a data science technique that involves using tools and techniques to transform raw data into actionable insights. Business intelligence tools can help organizations identify trends, patterns, and insights that can inform the change management process. This can help organizations make informed decisions, improve communication, and increase the efficiency of change management initiatives.
Change managers can use business intelligence to answer the following questions:
What insights can we gain from our data?
What trends and patterns are emerging from our data?
How can we use business intelligence to improve communication and collaboration among stakeholders?
How can we use business intelligence to increase the efficiency of change management initiatives?
Using Data Visualization
Data visualization is a valuable data science technique that involves presenting data in a visual format such as graphs, charts, and maps. Data visualization can help organizations communicate complex information more effectively and make it easier for stakeholders to understand the goals, objectives, and progress of change management initiatives. This can improve communication and increase stakeholder engagement in the change management process.
Change managers can use data visualization to answer the following questions:
How can we present our data in a way that is easy to understand?
How can we use data visualization to communicate progress and results to stakeholders?
How can we use data visualization to identify trends and patterns in our data?
How can we use data visualization to increase stakeholder engagement in the change management process?
Monitoring and Evaluating Progress
Monitoring and evaluating progress is a critical part of the change management process. Data science techniques, such as statistical analysis and data mining, can be used to monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of change management initiatives. This can help organizations identify areas for improvement, adjust the change management plan, and ensure that change management initiatives are achieving the desired outcomes.
Change managers can use monitoring and evaluation techniques to answer the following questions:
How can we measure the effectiveness of our change management initiatives? (e.g. employee engagement, customer satisfaction, business outcomes, etc.) And what method do we use to collect the data? E.g. surveys or focus groups?
What data do we need to collect to evaluate the change initiative progress?
How can we use statistical analysis and data mining to identify areas for improvement?
How can we use monitoring of ongoing support or continuous improvement?
The outlined approaches are some of the key ways in which we can use data science to manage the change process. Change practitioners should invest in their data science capability and adopt data science techniques to drive effective change management success. Stakeholders will take more notice of change management status and they may also better understand the value of managing change. Most importantly, data helps to achieve change objectives.
