Getting out of the box with change success metrics

As a Change Manager, you know that you’re always balancing people and results. You’re not just putting people through the pain of change, delivering projects, creating solutions, and often spending millions of dollars, just for the fun of it - there actually needs to be a Return on Investment (ROI) on the other side of all this effort and expense. Contrary to popular opinion, Change Management is NOT fluffy. It cares about people - yes. But as an approach, mindset and channel to realising and achieving the business benefits - financial and experiential.

Ironically, not all projects (or Project Managers!) actually have clearly defined success measures or a consistent and planned methodology for tracking progress. Too often, the goal of a project is to deliver the thing on time, on budget, to quality, to scope, instead of ensuring that the thing actually provides some real benefit to the experience of people, and ideally the bottom line. Ticking off line items in a Gantt chart or moving cards along an Agile board is seen as success, instead of getting a baseline of data, and consistently measuring in against it throughout the project and any phases or features that are delivered along the way.   

But you can influence a project to define success measures and track progress by thinking out of the box. Here are some approaches:

Track it yourself

Let’s say your project sets and forgets and maybe it's been over a year already, and it's only been partially launched and there are no defined measures. In this case, if a project isn't measuring, you can also obviously just do it yourself in the background. There's nothing to stop you. Done correctly, done mindfully, treading lightly. There's no reason why you can't go talk to the different teams to get the data. There's no reason why you can't just turn around and go: "Great. In my Change update for our Weekly Working Group Meeting (or our fortnightly standup) I'm going to present this data as part of my Change update." There's no reason you can't drive it and be the change you want to see.

You are the Change Lead. You get to decide what you do and don't measure and what you do and don't focus on, and obviously you do that in conversation with your Project Manager, your Sponsor, your stakeholders. But ultimately, if they're not mature enough to be measuring this stuff, sometimes it's about showing how great it can be to have an expert in the room. And you might blitz people out of the water because of it. There's definitely been times where I’ve worked on changes where because of the approach that I’ve taken on, because of the depth that I’ve gone to, or because of the information that I’ve brought to light, people have been like: "Wow, we never thought about it that way!"  That's one thing you could just go ahead, steamroll, do it, bring it up in the right forum, and showcase the results.

Vision Setting

Another way to do it is to push them to do Vision Setting. You could influence them to go: "Hey, we're getting to launch. We want to make sure that everybody's really excited and motivated, and are on the same page around what a successful launch would look like. Let's do a Vision Setting workshop.” Or “I'd love to do a Vision Setting workshop. How do you feel about that?" And through that process, especially the way I teach it in Leading Successful Change, you’ll get your key success measures defined.

Retrofit

Another way of going about it is to actually retrofit. Say you've already launched a little bit, you could run a PIR (Post-Implementation Review) and as part of that, ask: "Great, what were we measuring? How do we know it was successful? The parts that we have launched?" If they're like: "Oh, we weren't measuring anything," you can counter with: "Okay, cool. Maybe for future ones, do you think we should be measuring something, so we can tell if it's successful or not?"  Sometimes you've already got a bit of evidence that there's some gaps going on, so leverage the evidence!

Get commitment upfront

Once you get the initial change success metrics, getting commitment from the project to actually track them consistently through the project is a whole ‘nother ball game. As soon as possible, ask: “When are we going to check in on this?” Get that commitment upfront, ideally with the right people in the room. You could bring everybody who's a data owner for those metrics together and go: "Hey all, we need this data every 3 months. Can you make it happen?" The data owners will be like: "Yep, we get that data.” Or “Nope, we don't." To which you can say: “Okay, cool. How could we get that?” 

You can ask the question, and it might add a few extra tasks to some teams, but again, what it'll probably do is shine a big light on the fact that a lot of teams are not measuring anything. And that, in and of itself, is value. Remember you are slowly changing the culture that you're already working in. You're almost trying to change it from the inside.  Every time somebody goes: "Oh yeah, we should measure something like that, probably." It's like: "Yes! That's a win for Change." Making them that little bit more mature and your worth that little bit more evident.

And that’s what being a trusted change advisor is all about - it’s a different mindset than just managing change, as you’re truly and strategically partnering with the business to set them up for success through the change, increasing change maturity and business acumen, building capability and facilitating trusting relationships and real Return on Investment. 

If you’re keen to have massive impact and add tons of value to your projects, teams and clients, come to my free advanced-level Change Advisor Bootcamp next week and learn how to bring my top consulting skills into your change leadership. It’s on Wednesday 24 May from 6.00pm-8.00pm AEST (Sydney time) and spaces are limited.

CLICK HERE to register ASAP your free spot on my Change Advisor Bootcamp

Lata xx