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But do you apply the same rigour to measuring how well you are managing the changes resulting from your projects?

Many change management professionals measure activities, such as the number of communication sessions held, as opposed to what business leaders truly care about, the achievement of the results expected from the change.

A major challenge in measuring change management effectiveness is that success is marked by non-events, such as:

• Employees not resisting a change
• Valued employees not leaving the organization
• Projects not being abandoned or failing to deliver expected results
• Drops in productivity during implementation are not deep or prolonged
• Customers are not impacted negatively

To assess change management effectiveness you need to focus on measuring the success of the individual transitions in response to a change. When an organization implements a change, it comes to life one person at a time. Each impacted employee must go through a personal transition to adopt the change. Organizational success is the cumulative result of successful individual transitions. In the simplest sense, the objective of change management is to enable successful individual transitions.

Measure the Success of Individual Transitions

Step 1 – Define the Transition

Measuring the success of individual transitions requires that you first define, at a practical level, what employees impacted by a change will have to do differently in their day-to-day jobs. Once the transition has been clearly defined, it’s possible to measure individual progress in making the transition.

Step 2 – Measure Individual Progress

At Navigo, we measure individual progress using a five-level commitment scale:

Level What it Means for the Individual

1. Awareness I am aware of the need for the change and know how I will be impacted.
2. Acceptance I accept the need for the change and the impact it will have on my role.
3. Application I have the skills and training necessary to apply the changes to my role.
4. Adoption I know that the change is here to stay as it is now part of how I perform my role.
5. Advocacy I feel positively about the change and I am encouraging others to think similarly.

Managers can use this scale to monitor the commitment level of employees during a change and then choose specific strategies to help individuals progress through the five levels.

Step 3 – Measure Cumulative Impact

To measure the cumulative impact of the individual transitions, we use three success measures that were developed by the Prosci organization:

• Speed of adoption (how quickly?) – the percentage of employees trained in a defined period of time
• Utilization (how many?) – the percentage of employees using the process and tools in their daily work
• Proficiency (how well?) – the percentage of employees using the process and tools correctly

This data can be gathered in a number of ways, including interviews with a representative sample of employees and individual surveys.

Individual progress and cumulative impact need to be measured a number of times during the lifecycle of a project to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of your change management plan. By measuring multiple times, you receive early warning of the need for revisions to the plan in order to achieve the desired progress.

Effective and useful measurement practices always focus on how your change management efforts are contributing to the achievement of the business outcomes that your leaders care about.