Benefits (5)

i. People-side

Identify and prioritise change activities/projects into degree of "people change", ie high, medium and low. Remember: people changes are generally less predictable but have more value.

Realizing that there are no universal benchmarks around the adoption, utilisation and proficiency, fill in the table below

More details on the human factors

Cost avoidance (real and tangible costs).

Some of these are hard to measure, such as morale. The aim is to minimize their negative impacts on the project/activity and organisations.

Some examples include impact on

i. Productivity

ii. Key stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, staff, shareholders, etc

iii. Staff turnover, especially of valued staff

iv. Morale

v. Quality of work

vi. Resistance (active and passive)

vii. Stress, confusion, fatigue, etc

Some examples of costs include

i. Project delays

ii. Missed milestones

iii. Expenses not reduced

iv. Efficiencies not gained

v. Revenue not increased

vi. Marketshare not gained

vii. Resources not available when required

viii. Budget over-runs

ix. Unexpected obstacles/challenges appear

x. Too much rework

xi. Unmet objectives

xii. Project abandoned

xiii. Waste not eliminated

xiv. Regulations not met, resulting in fines/penalties,

xv. Loss of investment in results not delivered, etc

Other factors to consider

i. History of failed change activities

ii. Change saturation, etc

Using the above as a guide, complete the table below, ie Identify the cost ($) of poorly implemented/handled change to project and organisation.

iii. Risk Mitigation

There are many risks involved in change management implementation. In addition to the people-side risk; there are financial, technology, schedule, operation, dependency, project, strategic, etc risks to consider.

if a planned change project has a high people-side risk, then the following table needs to be completed by identifying the 3 main risks for the following risk areas: people-side, non people-side and organisational

Notes

- Initially list all the risks that could occur and identify the major few with the rationale for their selection. The list need not be restricted to 3 if there are extra ones that need mentioning

- What would activate the risk happening? What would invoke the potential risk?

- Scale of 1 to 10; with 10 being the highest probability of happening. Focus on the high probability ones

- If unable to put a dollar value , grade as high (H), medium (M) and Low (L)

- Strategies, or risk response, are developed to handle the risks with focus on most probable and highest impact

- Who is going to ensure that the strategy developed to handle the risk is effectively implemented?

- As most risk tables are usually completed based on expert views, historical data from similar projects and inputs from key stakeholders, it is important to regularly review the above table to determine the current risk status and to identify any new major risk elements that are occurring or might, occur. This review will be used to identify any new risk that was not expected at the start of a project.

iv. Benefits Realisation Insurance

This examines the potential benefits of a change project

For each of the objectives of the project ask: "Is meeting this objective dependent on people doing the job differently" Then ask: "What percentage of these benefits result from people doing their jobs differently?"

Applying a good change management approach based on expected benefits is like insurance and any likely benefits that could arrive outside this approach are like being "uninsured".

The table below sets out how to identify and evaluate this approach

List 5 of the objectives of the particular change and identify if they are dependent on the people side of change and how much of the benefit is tied to people doing their job differently

v. Probability of Meeting Objectives

Research (Prosci, 2010) has shown that the more effective change management approaches result in a higher likelihood of delivering intended results, ie a direct correlation between value delivered to the organisation and the effectiveness of change management. Projects having effective change management deliver value up to 6 times of those with poor change management. Criteria include meeting project objectives, staying on schedule and within budget, etc