Is Your Organization Ready for Process Change?

Introduction

This survey is based on the wildly successful discussions on change in Linked-In and my classes on process change for process improvement experts of all disciplines, middle level process and business managers and executives, and IT specialists at the University of Toronto's School For Continuing Studies.

Due to the overwhelming response and interest in this tool, I have now made the tool available at a nominal charge for those organizations to wish to take advantage of this expertise and knowledge base to understand the limitations of their own organization in making successful change happen, and the reasons for failure.

Survey Details

Many organizations are in denial about their ability to change successfully. 

Most organizations fail at change more often than they succeed. 

Executives and Senior Managers in many organizations have a far more optimistic view of the success of past changes and probability of success with future changes than mid level and line staff who are intimately familiar with how these changes are actually working and planned to work.

Many organizations plunge headlong into making process changes, with little consideration given to the following factors;

1)     Will the organizations culture permit success?

2)     Does the organization have the capacities and resources to ensure success?

3)     Are there any legacy issues that might confound any change?

4)     Will your leadership be able to make it happen?

These four supporting factors must be in place to some reasonable degree before any organisation can even begin to think about change. Issues in one or moire of the above four factors are going to limit the organizations ability to make successful changes that achieve the desired results.

Over and above the supporting factors above, a further eight factors impact upon the likelihood of a successful outcome of any kind of change. these factors concern the change process itself. Even is the supporting factors are largely favorable, the change process itself can be inadequate, defective, or generally not up to the task required. Evaluation of the adequacy of the change process itself is based on Kotter’s widely known book “Leading Change”. 

All 12 factors must be present to a reasonable degree to ensure that changes made are successful. A lot of pieces must be in place to ensure successful change, few organizations have all of these peices. and many don't have even most of them. This is a major reason why changes are frequently so unsuccessful.

This simple tool asks a number of fundamental questions for each of the factors and calculates a “score” based on the answers. Based on the score relative to a benchmark of all answers to these questions, any organization can determine how it stacks up versus the "average", in terms of supporting factors and integrity or adequacy of the change process itself to disclose any weak areas.

Once these weak areas have been highlighted by use of the tool it is then possible to determine how to address these issues, so that future changes may enjoy a higher degree of success.

Survey Methodology

The survey itself if simple, easy and very quick to complete. The survey utilizes powerful technology to capture, analyse and report raw data over the internet, ensuring that the survey is extremely efficient, and therefore inexpensive. Results are collected in real time, and are available on-line to authorized users.

We require the survey to be administered confidentially, using the anonymity of the internet, to ensure accuracy of the raw data.

The survey should be given to all levels, as it is important to stratify results by level, to determine the true levels of both change readiness and adequacy of the change process.

Ideally the survey should be organization wide in scope and taken before any major change is initiated, however, it can be customized for a smaller scope of change, or a more specific change if required. Many organizations will find a pilot study or test sample useful to determine if a much broader survey should be made.

Survey Cost

The cost is based on number of participants. Cost per participant is $ 10 plus HST. This includes use of the standard survey, data collection, analysis and standardized reporting.

Many organizations will find that they need more than just the basic results, and want to know more, therefore an interpretive guide and diagnosis is available to assist with understanding of the data, and developing solutions to improve going forward, increasing the probability of success of future change initiatives.

The cost of the interpretive guide/diagnosis depends on the scale of the survey, and is additional to the cost per participant.

For less than 25 participants, Interpretive guide/diagnosis is an additional $ 500 plus HST

For 25 to 100 participants, interpretive guide/diagnosis is an additional $ 1,000 plus HST

For over 100 participants, pricing will be customized and be on request, as typically, users will want more analysis of responses, and interpretation is usually more complex.

The survey itself can be easily customized if required to suit the exact nature of the change itself, and/or organizational specific circumstances, at a custom price.

Please email me at ed@burnschandler.com for more details and/or to confirm a quote.