The New Book “Change Insight” Introduction: Chapter 7 Change Assessment and Measurement

Change is inevitable, and Change Management is an important management discipline in running a contemporary and dynamic digital organization. If you could only manage what you measure, can you make an assessment of your “Changeability,” what are the promises and perils of change measurement, and how to improve the success rate of organizational Change Management via an comprehensive assessment and objective measurement?
Measuring is a good starting point to change: A change manager needs to assess business changeability and evaluate every specific scenario to create the change program success. Ultimately, the success of the change program is measured by results that are important values to the organization. If these values have not been clearly identified at the outset, you cannot get the true alignment of your organization and all working toward the same goals and outcomes, you lack clarity and purpose of direction for changes. Change Management measures or KPIs are strong tools, that can be both rewarding but also cause damage to an organization. It’s not the use of KPIs per se, but the applications of those might lead to behavior that conflicts with group goals. Hence, when the need for change becomes apparent, the management should turn the spotlight on measures and incentives as drivers of behavior, creators of sub-optimal decisions and the eventual poor outcomes.
Why is so hard to measure change: Perhaps the difficulty in measuring Change Management is that the very thing we are measuring is changing. There is no one size fits all change efforts, and there is no magic formula to measure change as well. Some changes are easier to quantified, but others are very difficult to measure. Still, there needs to be some way to measure change, whether quantitative or qualitative, anecdotal or empirical. Because if certain important change is immeasurable, how can you know whether there is a benefit aht is worth the cost, in resources or people’s time or effort. How can you know if the enterprise is headed in the right direction? How can you get people on board? The other consideration is that the part you are measuring is only a snapshot of the entire organizational picture, each change effort is so different, some Change Management needs to be measured via leading indicators, while others are better measured via lagging indicators.
A good balanced scorecard encompasses the key strategic goals and the drivers thereof: Good balanced scorecard measure key strategic performance indicators along with the things that drive those measures. You are leveraging balance scorecard in measuring the outcome of the change. That metric needs to be “SMART,” so people can see what the outcome will look like throughout the transition, and then there should be a consideration for a balanced scorecard that measures the progress of the goals you want to achieve during the change transition, this keeps people focused. The success of that balanced scorecard will be determined by the components of the scorecard and how meaningful those components are to the successful implementation of the change.
Selecting the right measure and measuring it right are both art and science. To measure the right things for encouraging positive behaviors, breakdown silo thinking, leveraging trade-off, to ensure the business as a whole achieving the best performing result.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu