Change Management Learning Center
Sponsored by Prosci
2007 Best Practices in Change Management
Special tutorial series
More than 400 project leaders and change
management practitioners representing organizations from 59
countries share lessons learned and key success factors in
Prosci's 2007 Best Practices in Change Management
benchmarking report. This release marks Prosci's 10th anniversary
for change management research and 5th longitudinal study. The
70 page report is full of useful tips and findings that you can
put to use immediately. This
special tutorial seriesprovides glimpses into the
data and analysis from the 2007 report.
Change saturation
For the first time, Prosci's best practices benchmarking study
addressed the concept of change saturation - when organizations have too
much change happening at one time. Below are excerpts on change
saturation from the
2007 benchmarking report.
Watch a 'fire side chat' with Tim Creasey, Prosci
Director of Research and Development,
discussing several key findings on change saturation Time: 01:09 - Click to activate
Change management competency of those in the
organization responsible for implementing change (project
teams, senior leaders, managers and supervisors)
* These are long-term solutions that
fundamentally change how the organization behaves
Amount of change
happening
External market drivers - customer and competitor issues
Internal opportunities or challenges
Funding and resources available to implement changes
Reducing the number of initiatives
Staggering or sequence changes
Clearly
prioritizing the changes
* Many times, these alternatives are
challenging given the needs of and demands on the organization
Disruptive nature of
each of the changes
How well the 'people side' of each initiative is managed
Groups being impacted by numerous initiatives at once
Applying solid change management processes and principles
to each project
Mapping and
managing the 'people' impact of initiatives
* These steps can be implemented
immediately by project teams throughout the organization
Benchmarking excerpts
Level of change saturation
Figure A shows the relative ranking by participants on the amount of
change saturation they were currently experiencing in their
organization. Over one third of participants (36%) cited being past or
at the point of saturation. Just under one fifth of participants (19%)
cited having a significant amount of spare capacity for change.
Figure A – Change saturation level
Editor's reflection:
Change saturation is really a function of three distinct
components: 1) how much change is happening within the
organization, 2) how disruptive each change is and 3) how much capacity the organization has
to handle change. Some organizations have higher capacities
for change based on their structure, values and history.
Many organizations that Prosci works with are making an
effort to increase their change capacity by building
organizational change management competency. The thinking
here is that when changes are managed more effectively from
the people side, the organization can actually take on more
change without suffering the negative consequences of
"change saturation." The building of organizational change
management competency is the focus of Prosci's Enterprise
Change Management (ECM) work.
Email a Prosci analystto discuss ECM in
more detail.
Symptoms of change saturation
Participants identified numerous symptoms of change saturation.
Symptoms of change saturation were reported in three areas:
1. Individual behaviors exhibited in a change-saturated environment.
The top three symptoms were:
Disengagement and apathy (some employees took the attitude of
“just tell me what you want me to do”)
Frustration and increased stress
Fatigue and burnout (employees became tired and worn out by the
number of different changes happening around them)
2. Symptoms of change saturation with projects and project teams. The
top two symptoms were:
Changes did not realize benefits (projects failed to meet their
intended objectives when taking place in a saturated environment)
Lack of resources (projects were being attempted without the
proper resources as the organizational investment and human capital
were spread too thin)
3. Organizational symptoms of a change-saturated environment. The
top four symptoms were:
Higher turnover
A decline in productivity
Increased absenteeism
Loss of focus on business basics
Tactics for coping with saturation
Participants provided a number of tactics for addressing change
saturation. The top two most frequently cited techniques for dealing with
periods of excessive change were:
Establish and communicate priorities By an overwhelming
margin, participants commented on the need to set priorities to
alleviate change saturation. Priorities should be set by senior
leaders. Once priorities are established, they should be
communicated to the rest of the organization.
Communicate
effectively Communication should be from multiple sources in the
organization. It should be frequent, consistent, focused and should
show how changes fit into the strategy. Additionally, participants
stated that it is important to communicate a vision of the future or
the “big picture” for the organization. Communication should also
include soliciting feedback.
Project governance changes
In addition to the suggestions above, many participants provided
comments on the actual management of the projects underway. Suggestions
related to project governance included:
Stagger or sequence changes
Break changes into
segments or phases
Reduce number of initiatives
Editor's reflection:
Organizations can deal with change saturation. The first
step is to document that it is occurring and build the
recognition that 'too much change' is an issue. This
involves mapping and understanding the portfolio of change
and the collective impact of changes on people in the
organization. The second
step is to focus on the factors that an organization can
address to reduce change saturation. The model at the top of
this tutorial showed that there
are three factors that contribute to change saturation - the
inherent organizational capacity, the amount of change
happening and the disruptive nature of each of the changes.
In the long term, organizations can work to build their
organizational capacity through Enterprise Change
Management. In the short term, the organization can 1)
address the amount of change by prioritizing or eliminating
some changes or 2) address the disruptive nature of each
change by applying change management on the projects and
initiatives that are underway.
Summary:
There are some important takeaways from the benchmarking data around
change saturation.
Change saturation is occurring in many organizations currently.
The tactics for dealing with change saturation are tied to the
three factors that define change saturation: 1) the inherent
organizational capacity, 2) the amount of change happening and 3)
the disruptive nature of each of the changes.
Short term solutions can address the amount of change
(prioritize, reduce the number of changes) and the disruptive
nature of the change (apply effective change management on each
change)
Long term solutions can address the organizational
capacity issue by building change management competency
throughout the
organization (Enterprise Change Management)
The symptoms of change saturation found in the complete
report provide a solid basis for evaluating if your organization is
reaching a point of saturation - from the individual, project and
organizational perspectives. They are also an effective tool for
building an awareness with senior leaders that there are in fact
consequences for launching too many initiatives at one time.
Participants provided data on the amount of change
happening now and the amount of change expected in the coming years.
Based on the data, the problem of change saturation will not go away
and is in fact growing.
Building organizational change management competency can
increase the capacity for change. Prosci's work in Enterprise Change
Management deals with how to build these competencies. You can find
out more in the What, Why and How of Enterprise Change Management tutorial.
The
full report includes complete lists for
symptoms of and techniques for dealing with change saturation
presented in this tutorial.
Have you missed one of the Special best
practices tutorials? Use the links below to review these tutorials with
highlights and excerpts from the 2007 benchmarking report:
