Thoughts on Change Management
Measuring for Success –
How Efficient are Our Change
Programs?
Our business world seems to be triggered by
results. Executives set strategic goals, each employee is measured upon successful delivery of
set objectives, and shareholders take their decisions based on key financial and non-financial
figures. When it comes to measuring successful
change the opinions are divided: some refuse to
be measured, other don’t want to start change
management programs before having proofs of
their efficiency. So can this be reduced to a war
of beliefs, almost like a religious crusade?
other projects that failed”…. Or simply the 70%
would include people that weren’t ecstatic
about the outcome, which doesn’t say much
about the success in itself. It looks like the assessment of success is based on guts-feeling rather
than hard facts.
Still the question remains what makes change
successful? When the objective is tangible (like
“we want to reduce our costs by 10% by optimizing our processes” or “we want to increase our
market share by becoming more customer-oriented”) the results can easily be measured, but
many (change) managers would argue that
the success or failure will not only be dependent upon their activities as change leaders.
That is probably one of the biggest challenge
we are facing when being measured: the correlation or the” if-then” link between our workshops, trainings, events, etc. and the successful
change is not simple to make, but to be honest
this is not only related to change!
To find an answer (if ever there was one), we
need to understand: What is successful change?
What are potential tangible goals and how can
these be measured?
Successful Change
70% of change project fail. This figure is widely
used. When looking at the number in more detail you uncover some interesting details: about
the source of the figure (very often one source
is being used for 10 years without being questioned). It will also depend on who you ask, because “our project was successful, it’s only the
Most change initiatives work on intangible factors like creating high-performance teams or
customer-orientation. While these can be mea-
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Thoughts on Change Management
sured by asking the people involved, we still
need to raise the question whether these two
facts have helped the organization become
better at what they do (e.g. at selling more, or
at reducing costs). I can hear some of you going, but this makes our business environment a
better place. Sure, but people in an organization are seldom together just for the fun of it:
they have been hired to deliver a certain quality of service.
delivery, worried that their generous assumptions would show their flaws.
When working on change most managers will
choose the “soft” approach. Their expectations will address intangible benefits, sometimes
based on the team feedback, sometimes based
on their frustration with the actual drive in their
team. While this supports a better work environment and certainly the motivation of the individuals the link to the company’s success or strategy
is missing and cannot be automatically made.
Objectives for Change
There are multitudes of motives for change,
depending of the level of the organization undergoing change. Some will just want to work
on the teambuilding; other will want to drastically change the structure and processes of
the company. When change leaders start, their
final objectives are not always transparent or
aligned and are therefore also difficult to define. Especially at the beginning the expected
change looks like a moving target. Defining
SMART goals will naturally be challenging.
Measuring Change
If you ever had to write a business case for a
large change initiative you know that most
foreseen advantages including cost reduction
and increased revenue are often based on
very vague assumptions. While this standardized approach is there to help make decisions,
few executives are interested in following up on
Adult trainers use Donald L Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model (see Table 1) to measure learning.
Most of the time they would simply measure the
reaction to the training activity, test the transferred learning and hopefully would check how
the learning was transferred into a concrete
new behavior leading to better results.
Interestingly enough, we might have no common understanding of what successful change
is, or what we want to achieve with change,
but we are very good at measuring change implementation (think of the 70% of failed change
projects). Sure we have great tools to measure.
Be it questionnaires, interviews, observation, all
these activities will provide valuable information on the perceived change.
Level
Evaluation Type
Evaluation Description
Examples of Evaluation Tools and Methods
1
Reaction
Reaction evaluation is how
the delegates felt about
the training or learning
experience.
‘Happy sheets’, feedback forms.
Verbal reaction, post-training surveys or
questionnaires.
2
Learning
Learning evaluation is
the measurement of the
increase in knowledge before and after.
Typically assessments or tests before and
after the training.
Interview or observation can also be
used.
3
Behavior
Behavior evaluation is
the extent of applied
learning back on the job implementation.
Observation and interview over time are
required to assess change, relevance of
change, and sustainability of change.
4
Results Results evaluation is the
effect on the business or
environment by the trainee.
Measures are already in place via normal
management systems and reporting - the
challenge is to relate to the trainee.
Table 1: Kirkpatrick’s four levels of training evaluation (source: businessballs.com)
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Thoughts on Change Management
As change will not only impact single people,
but a team or a larger organization the more
you try to measure results the harder the link to
the change architecture put in place will be.
The interviews, questionnaires and other tools
we are using will therefore mostly focus on the
reaction and maybe also on the perceived new
behaviors, but will not be able to dive further
into result effectiveness. If they try to do so, it will
be based on perception rather than hard facts.
recalcitrant executive knows he/she needs
change management. So the call for results is
mainly based on two aspects:
• The difference of quality – can you really
help me as an executive deliver successful
change?
• The insecurity – how can I justify the major
investment to my peers and bosses?
So the next time when being asked for results
and measures, focus on these two aspects,
rather than look for questionable figures or argue about the sense and nonsense of numbers
in change programs.
The need for concrete success results is understandable. Large change management programs are expensive and exhaustive for an organization. And in the meantime even the most
About Acrasio
Acrasio is a strategy consultancy with extensive
international experience with major
blue chip companies.
Contact
The consulting approach incorporates two
different aspects:
• Analysis of the business surrounding (market,
competition, regulations) and identification
of adequate strategy and approach
• Understanding of the human pool and
employee basis and structure for a better
alignment with the company’s objectives
Dr. Karin Stumpf focuses
on the management of
organizational changes to
improve business efficiency
and effectiveness. She holds an MBA and a
Master in Organisational Psychology. Previously
she worked for two of the world’s biggest
strategy consulting firms (McKinsey & Deloitte)
+49 30 44317996
[email protected]
www.acrasio.com/change
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