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 is no longer a nice to have. It’s a must-have for a lot of organisations. A lot of stakeholders are now demanding to see and understand what is happening in the world of change. With the enhanced volume of change and therefore the increased investment made by the organisations, it’s no wonder.
When we look across the room amongst the various disciplines, data forms an integral part of any function. Finance – tick. HR – tick, yes pretty much all aspects of people are tracked and reported. Operations – tick, as we have all types of performance KPIs and efficiency indicators. Technology – tick, since every part of technology can easily be measured and reported. Marketing – tick, as marketing outcomes are tied to revenue and customer sentiments.
With Covid it is even more the case that data is integral. We can no longer ‘walk the factory’ to sense what is happening. To see what is happening and what is going to happen stakeholders revert to data. In our virtual working environment, stakeholders require a constant dashboard of data to track how things are progressing.
In the past it used to be that measuring change is only something you do in a project when you want to see if stakeholders are ready for the change. No more. Most organisations have a multitude of changes running concurrently. There is no choice to select 1 or 2 changes to roll out. With significant business challenges, most organisations are finding that running with multiple changes is the norm.
With multiple changes, increased stakeholder demands and appetite, measuring change is no longer just an activity. Measuring change takes a set of structured routines. It requires effective governance design. It takes experience and analytical expertise. Most of all, it is not a once-off event, it is a continual building of organisational muscle and capability. We are heading into the world of change analytics capability.
Here are 7 core components of building and maturing change analytics capability:
This is about setting up the right steps in place so that change data can be identified, collected, and documented. This includes identifying the types of change data you would like to collect and how to go about collecting them. It will be easier to start with the core set of data required and then build from these as needed. This will reduce the risk of overwhelming your stakeholders.
After the right metrics and collection channels have been identified then it’s about building the regular routines to collect and document the metrics.
To really reap the value of change analytics you will need to gain the blessing and sponsorship of your leaders. Well, at least in time. In the beginning, you may need some time to come up with compelling data that tell the story that you want them to before you show your leaders. Eventually, without strong leadership buy-in, change data will not be effectively leveraged to make business decisions.
Getting your leaders’ blessing isn’t just a verbal exercise. It means that they are signing-up to regularly review, discuss and utilise change data to realise business value.
Think about the various stakeholders and what you need them to understand in terms of change data. The way you educate stakeholders will be different to how you educate operations managers or the PMO. Plot out how you plan to help them get familiar with change data. Do you need particular roles to support data analysis? Is it a Change Analyst who is focused on the regular upkeep and consolidation of change data? What roles do you need other team members to play?
With a full set of change data infront of you, it’s now time to dive into them to generate insights. What is the data telling you? How do they support other data sources to form a clear picture of what is happening in the workforce? Is the data accurate and updated? Generating insights from the data takes skills and experience. It takes the ability to integrate different sources of data outside of change data themselves.
This is about setting up the right routines and processes so that any insights generated may be discussed and applied. It could be through various governance forums, leadership or planning meetings that insights are shared and socialised. An integral part of this step is applying the insight by making business decisions. For example, do we delay the initiative roll out or invest more to support leaders? Are there reasons for us to speed up roll out to support the workforce?
Change analytics is a capability.
With good change data emerging, you also need to have the right people with the right skills to collect, process and interpret the data. You may also want to think about which teams need what analytical skills. Do you have people in the team who are sufficiently analytical and data-oriented? Do they know how to interpret the data to form trends and predictions?
You may want to think about organising capability sessions or training to strengthen data analysis skills. Are there members in the different governance bodies that need support to be more confident in using change data?
7. Realising business value through change analytics
The last part of the equation is realising business value through change analytics. This is about tracking and documenting the value realised through using change analytics. It could include incidents where the business decision made has lead to significant risk reduction or operations protection. It could be enhanced leadership confidence mitigating risks in negative customer experience. Tracking value generated is critical to make clear to stakeholders the value of the overall investment.
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To read up more about change analytics go to The Ultimate Guide to Measuring Change.
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Digitisation, Covid, competition and changing industry conditions have amongst other things brought on an accelerated change agenda for a lot of organisations. What were previously thought to be 1 to 5 year horizons of change suddenly became an immediate change. Not only is working from home a norm for a lot of organisations but the struggle for enterprises to survive and stay relevant in the new norm means more changes. The normal equilibrium for a lot of these organisations is one that consumes a smaller number of changes at any one time. Suddenly, with the increased number of changes this leads to change saturation.
Think of change saturation as a cup that fills up. The size of the cup is the change capacity. With limited capacity, there is only so much volume that is inherent. When the cup overflows the changes don’t stick and simply fall by the waist side.
Leaders can have significant influence on the organisation. Also, change leadership is a significant part of how change is managed and delivered. Effective change leadership can build on the capability of teams to be more agile and capable of absorbing more changes. Effective change leadership can also help to maximise how optimal the change is socialised and implemented, and therefore how it lands.
The organisation’s change capability is one of the most important factors in determining their change capacity. Think of agile startup organisations that are constantly pivoting, introducing new operating models, products and services. This is part of their cultural norm. Other organisations that maybe less agile can also develop some of these capabilities through experience and development.
Not all types of changes are the same. Typically, a lot of the changes driven by senior leaders are about improving the bottom line or top line, improving customer experience or improving efficiency. Some are more complex changes requiring significant change journeys. Others may even be inherently ‘negatively perceived’ such as organisational restructuring and layoffs. However, there are also changes that are inherently seen as benefiting the work of employees (such as process improvement leading to less red tape).
The number of changes also impact the change capacity. Obviously more changes mean more capacity consumed, within an extent.
The impact level of each change is also critical. Some initiatives have significant impact that requires a long period of time to embed the changes, e.g. culture change and complex system and process changes. On the other hand, simple process changes may not require much capacity and simple communication is all that is needed.
The overall change landscape of the organisation also affects perception and therefore in some ways the capacity for change. If competitors within the industry are all undergoing significant transformations then it sets the tone for what’s to come. In the same way, if all our friends are used to virtual ways of working then we become more open to it.
Measuring change saturation can be significantly beneficial for the organisation. Understanding the tipping point means that PMO and change teams can work to avoid this from a planning perspective. Finding out during or after the releases that there is too much change saturation is an expensive exercise that diminishes the planned initiative benefits. It also leads to loss of productivity and operational disruptions. Moreover, employees lose faith in the ability of the organisation to manage change.
With greater clarity of the change saturation points organisations can work to monitor, track and manage the risk of over saturation. Measures can then be put in place to ensure minimal business disruption and protection of initiative benefits. This should be a key focus for risk in change.
Firstly, there is not one change saturation point for the whole organisation. Each department or even team may have different change saturation points. This is because they have different leaders, different cultural norms and different change capabilities.
So how do we measure the change saturation at a department or division level? Look historically at how changes have been received, starting with the past few months.
Depending on what the department is in charge of, understanding the change saturation point means closely monitoring the operational indicators. During change saturation operational indicators are usually also negatively impacted, depending on the nature of the changes.
For a call centre this could be average handling time, customer satisfaction rate, absenteeism, etc. For a back office department it could be efficiency or effectiveness measures, case completion rate, case quality rating, etc. You don’t need to be the expert in all the various operational measures of each department as you can tap on the operations representatives of these departments.
Interview or conduct surveys with departmental leaders to understand their perception of how changes have been implemented and any potential disruptions on the business. Understand how their teams have experienced change. Ask them whether it has been challenging to balance operational needs with change-induced activities. For example, were there challenges in employees attending initiative training sessions, and completing their role delivery obligations?
Be careful of opinions and feedback from leaders and employees. There may be a tendency to over-state and complain that there is constantly too much change. This happens because some over-state the risk of change saturation hoping that this may lead to less change and therefore easier to manage the operations of a business. Take care to avoid this bias.
If the department has undergone periods that has resulted in negative impact on operational indicators and leaders have also provided feedback of similar change disruptions then measure this level of change. Record this specifically.
This requires a portfolio-level view of all the changes that have occurred and the various impacts of each initiative. With this measurement you are able to then identify this level as perhaps just exceeding the change saturation point for that department. With this identified you can then plot this change saturation line. You should also closely monitor this level and adjust as needed.
Using The Change Compass change impact can be expressed in terms of hours of impact per week. The change saturation line can the plotted against the change impact levels. From this, you’re able to easily visualise to what extent there could be risk in exceeding the change saturation line.
It is important to note that measuring change impacts and therefore change saturation should ideally be at a weekly level. Measuring change impact at a monthly level may not be sufficiently detailed enough since there could be changes in impact levels within each month. For example, for Finance the quarter-end consolidation cycle could start mid-month and therefore the change impact indication may show up as less than it actually should be simply because the data is rolled-up by month.
Deriving a monthly dashboard in which to inform not just the change volume, but types of changes, risks, and impacted areas will do wonders to provide clear visibility for the business to get ready for and to track changes.
Other disciplines such as HR, Marketing or Operations rely on data to make critical business decisions. The Change function should also follow suit. Being armed with the right change impact data means that you can help the business to precisely pin-point change saturation points. This can provide tremendous value to the business in terms of business, initiative and risk protection.
If you’re keen to chat more about how you are managing change saturation and to find out more about our solutions feel free to contact us here to organise a chat.
Read more about 4 common assumptions about change saturation that is misleading.
Change Management outcome is the holy grail, and virtually all organisations are undergoing change. Now more than ever, companies are challenged with multiple layers of driving change simultaneously. What is applicable in this situation is not about a particular methodology of implementing a change program. It is all about implementing simultaneous changes, at the same time. There is no luxury of just focusing on one change at a time, the result of competitive, industry, and environmental challenges.
As change practitioners we work closely with our colleagues in Operations to get ready for, implement, and fully embed changes. So how do our colleagues in operations view and manage change initiatives?
Operations as a function is focused on managing performance and delivery to ensure that the business runs smoothly, with little disruptions, and that performance measures are achieved. Operations is focused on resource management, efficiency, and achieving the various operational indicators whether it’s customer satisfaction, turn-around time, average handling time, or cost target.
READ MORE: Top 7 challenges faced by change practioners in generating insights from change data
When times are hectic and a lot is going on with multiple change initiatives, the key focus for Operations is on managing people’s capacity. Key questions would be “Do we have sufficient time to cater for the various changes?”, and “Will we exceed our change saturation level?”. This is a critical question to answer since the business still needs to run and deliver services without negative change disruptions.
From an Operations planning perspective ‘change capacity‘ is often reduced to the time element, especially those impacting frontline staff.
For example:
Though these are all critical questions clear answers will help Operations plan better to face multiple changes. However, this is not adequate. There is more to planning for multiple changes than just focusing on the time element.
Using the lego analogy to manage multiple changes
We all know LEGO as kids. To build a car we start one brick at a time and see how we go. We experiment with different colours, shapes, and sizes. We make do with the bricks we have and use our imagination to come up with what a car would look like. Sometimes we get stuck and we may need to tweak our bricks a little, or sometimes start from scratch.
It is the same as implementing change initiatives. In order to take people along the journey, we implement a series of activities and interventions so that our impacted stakeholders are aware, ready, committed, and embed the change. The design on the change journey is the process of determining what LEGO bricks to choose. There is no shortcut. It is not possible to build a building without each necessary brick to raise the building up. In implementing change, we also need to lay out each step in engaging our stakeholders.
McKinsey studies over decades have told us that one of the most critical factors to focus on in ensuring change outcome success is clear organisation-wide ownership and commitment to change across all levels. This means that when we design each change brick we need to ensure we target every level of impacted stakeholders.
For example:
Team Leaders: How often do we want Team Leaders to talk about the changes to their teams before the rollout? What content do we want them to use? Do they know how to translate the message in a way that resonates? Do we want them to tell compelling stories that talk to the what, why, and how of the change?
Managers: How are managers made accountable? What metrics are they accountable for? What mediums do we want them to use to engage their teams? What are the consequences of not achieving the outcomes?
Senior Managers: Through what mediums do we expect senior managers to engage their teams about the changes? How do we ensure that they are personally accountable for the success of the change? How are they involved to ensure they own the change?
Looking at the above you can see that for complex change there may need to be a lot of bricks in place to ensure the change outcome is successful!
Going back to the issue of facing into multiple changes, how do we play around with the bricks to ensure that multiple changes are successful? The same way that we play with LEGO bricks!
Example of data visualisation of ‘re-jigging’ change implementation timeline with The Change Compass using different scenarios.
Just like in building LEGO, for change initiatives we need to be agile and be flexible enough to play with and visualise what the change outcome could look like before pulling the trigger. We also need to be able to tweak as we go and adjust our change approaches as needed. In facing the multitude of changes that the organisation needs to be successful, we also need to be able to play with different implementation scenarios to picture how things will look like. Each brick needs to be carefully laid to reach the overall outcome.
Careful consideration also needs to be how all the bricks connect together – the analogy that the change outcomes across initiatives can be determined by how we’ve pieced together various pieces of LEGO for them to make sense, and result in the ownership and commitment of stakeholders.