Digital transformation programmes, a new strategy, performance improvement programmes are all notoriously difficult to implement successfully. The vast majority change initiatives struggle to achieve and maintain the planned programme goals. In fact, only 30% are successful. Timely and complete delivery of a critical initiative is therefore the true determinant of competitive advantage for any company.
The vast majority of change initiatives stumble over the very thing they are trying to transform: the attitudes and behaviours of people at all levels of the organisation. Our Change Insider® (CI) measures people’s attitudes and behaviours towards the initiative and how they experience it. Based on these insights, the CI facilitates concrete strategic and tactical actions you need to take to make sure your change initiative is delivered successfully: on time, in full and in a sustainable manner.
How the Change Insider® ensures success
The CI measures people’s perception of an initiative and how they experience it. This is done by asking a number of custom-designed questions as part of a short online survey that takes about 6 minutes to complete. The questions are created by collaborating with people from a cross-section of your organisation and cover the context, objectives, content and approach of your specific initiative. Therefore, the questions are tailored to your organisation and your change initiative. These are the crucial questions that live in your organisation about this specific initiative.
Everyone within the scope of the initiative answers these crucial questions. They do this in a confidential manner and can also add further comments. The survey results are then presented in practical, actionable reports for every relevant cross-section of your organisation.
The reports allow you to compare business units, departments, teams and levels in the organisation. You can see how your people are experiencing the initiative and how the chosen approach influences both the adoption of the change and the actual change itself. The feedback also highlights any differences between different levels or parts of the organisation. Therefore, you can carry out differentiated interventions and keep the entire initiative on track. The survey is repeated at fixed intervals. This way, the CI tracks the effect of interventions on the adoption of change, the actual change itself and the perception of the initiative over time. This provides information about what needs to be done when and where in the organisation to achieve the desired progress and sustainability of the change (see Figure 1).
The goal of the Change Insider® is very different to employee engagement surveys. The CI focuses on bringing about sustainable change with a specific initiative. Employee engagement surveys measure how dedicated employees are to their workplace or their employer.
The dynamics of change
People’s ability to change their attitudes and behaviours is determined mainly by their perceptions and intentions. So we must first change perceptions and intentions before any change in attitudes and behaviours occurs. But how do we do this? The best way to influence people’s perceptions and intentions is to provide information and encourage people to gain new experiences.
Perceptions and intentions record people’s motivations and are indicators of how hard people are willing to try or how much effort they intend to put in to display the required behaviour. During a change process, people are confronted with two forces: first, a change tension (the perceived need and urgency of the initiative) and, second, the power to change (the willingness to support and adopt the change and the ability to contribute). Both forces are needed in a programme to bring about change.
The way people experience these forces is the most important indicator of people’s perceptions and intentions towards an initiative. The rating for these two indicators gives the best prediction about a person’s intention to adopt the attitude and behaviour that is required. In different parts and levels of the organisation, the two forces are likely to develop differently, as shown in Figure 2. This drives the need for specific interventions for different parts of the organisation.
The Change Insider® provides fact-based guidance for precisely these differentiated interventions to enable the timely and complete delivery of your mission-critical initiative.
