Key Points

• Measuring workplace change success can help you to achieve the vision of the change, and support your organization to build its competency in managing and driving organizational change in the future.

• Take a multi-dimensional view of organizational change effectiveness, evaluating completion, achievement, and satisfaction. Doing so can help you to avoid confusing completing activities (means) with achieving outcomes (ends).

• Goals alone do not create sustained change. It takes an array of different types of supports to help you collect, assess, and learn from the progress made (or not) throughout the life of your organizational change effort.

One of the most persistent and potentially dangerous myths about organizational change is that 70-90% of all changes fail. Several academics have reviewed the evidence behind this oft-quoted statistic and found it to be wanting:

"...whilst it is widely acknowledged that the implementation of a new strategy can be a difficult task, the true rate of implementation failure remains to be determined. Most of the estimates presented in the literature are based on evidence that is outdated, fragmentary, fragile, or just absent." (Cândido and Santos, 2015)

The reality is that we don’t know the average failure rate — or the success rate — of organizational changes or transformations. If you stop to think about it, you can surely see, that given the scale and diversity of organizational changes that take place globally, it would be impossible to accurately gauge that rate.

However, it is wholly possible to measure the success of the changes that take place in your organization. Measuring change management results can help you to achieve the vision of the change. In addition, it can also support your organization to build its competency in managing and driving organizational change.

1. Differentiate activities and results

Too often with organizational changes, organizations misinterpret actions for results. To avoid this, it can be useful to build awareness of different standards of quality in change implementation. Researchers at the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) define three levels of quality in workplace change implementation: paper (manuals or guidelines are published), process (training and new procedures are in place), performance (people use the new change effectively and results are evaluated). As you may have guessed, it takes a good deal of effort to achieve performance. Conceptualizing change implementation as operating at various levels of quality can help your organization to avoid unrealistic expectations. For instance, that paper implementation — publishing guidelines — will be sufficient to create the performance that leads to results. It’s not.

2. Define change success in a multi-dimensional way

Rather than a singular “thing” you attain, it can be more useful to think about organizational change success in a multi-dimensional way.  In her research on strategy implementation, Susan Miller offers a helpful framework for evaluating change implementation success, which includes consideration of three dimensions: completion, achievement, and acceptability.

• Achievement: Did you achieve the intended results of the change?

• Completion: Did you complete all intended aspects of the change implementation, within the anticipated timeframe?

• Acceptability: How satisfied are stakeholders with the change process and outcomes?

Your organization likely is pretty good a measuring one or two of these areas. However, each of these dimensions is necessary, but insufficient by itself to provide a complete evaluation of the success of the change effort. It’s essential to reflect on change success using all three. I also recommend thinking about success on a spectrum. Consider defining the optimal target for success and a minimally acceptable target. It’s rare that we attain complete success or failure — your change metrics should reflect that.

3. Use goals appropriately to drive performance

Some of the best management research we have is about the relationship between goals and performance. For instance, you may know that in order to drive performance goals should be specific, time-bound and challenging. But did you know, that if they are too challenging — beyond the perceived ability of staff — that they can be demotivating?

That’s why, stretch goals — or seemingly impossible goals — should be used with caution. They tend to be most effective in organizations that are already operating at a high-level of performance and which have available resources to invest in the effort. For those organizations that are struggling or aiming for a turnaround, short-term goals, or challenging but doable goals, may work better.

4. Develop a system of supports to ensure goals lead to outcomes

Research is clear that goal-setting alone is not enough. A variety of supporting actions are necessary to fully leverage goals to power greater performance.

For instance, personal and group goals should be aligned. In the context of organizational change, it’s often important to review and adjust legacy goals or performance standards to avoid sending conflicting messages. In addition, leadership needs to consistently demonstrate commitment to goals. This can be done in part by tracking progress towards goals, openly discussing learning, and making adjustments where needed.

Finally, it takes foresight, planning, and good organization to identify and gather data needed to measure change management results. Your efforts don’t need to be complicated, but an effective change measurement does require planning upfront and consistent effort throughout the life of the organizational change.

Keep reading…

References

Barends, Eric, Janssen, Barbara, & Velghe, Cedric (2016). Technical report: Rapid evidence assessment of the research literature on the effect of goal setting on workplace performance.  (pp. 1-19). London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). See here.

Carlos J F Cândido and Sérgio P Santos (2015). “Strategy implementation: What is the failure rate?" Journal of Management & Organization, 21, pp. 237-262.

Hughes, Mark. (2011). Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail?. Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451-464.

Locke, Edwin A., and Gary P. Latham. (2002) "Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey." American Psychologist 57.9: 705.

Sitkin, Sim B., Kelly E. See, C. Chet Miller, Michael W. Lawless, and Andrew M. Carton. (2011) "The Paradox of Stretch Goals: Organizations in Pursuit of the Seemingly Impossible." Academy of Management Review 36.3: 544-66. Web.

Miller, Susan, (1997) “Implementing Strategic Decisions: Four Key Success Factors.” Organization Studies. 18, pp. 577-602.  Note: The findings of this research are based on a small number of case studies (11 decisions in 6 organizations.)