As a change leader, you understand the importance of communicating early and often and collecting feedback from stakeholders. But after collecting this data, then what? It is just as important to leverage the data you collect to analyze how ready your organization is for change and measuring the impact of change activities.
From stakeholder assessments to pulse surveys, strong change management relies on information to inform decisions. It also contributes to building a change management strategy that fits the organizational culture and specific project. Collected information is used to understand the people, reactions, attitudes, motivators, resistance, potential barriers, and influencers that will contribute to or impede successful transformation. This allows leaders to right-size the project in context of the culture.
Start Measuring Early
Determining how you are going to measure change early is crucial to success. This allows you to build a baseline that you can then measure against and helps you gain insights as to how you are progressing to properly adjust your strategy sooner. While you can start measuring change at any point within your project, starting early can save time, money, and frustration in the long run.
Think Beyond Surveys
Surveys are a great starting point for your change analytics program that allow you to get a glimpse into what people are thinking, but thoughts and words can differ from an individual's actions. Determine how you can leverage analytics to measure the actions you want to see as part of change and incorporate that into your measurement plan. This can include adoption measurements of a new tool, communication open rates, training completions, and other analytics.
Leverage Leadership
Organization leaders can help support your change analytics approach to drive data collection. Tap leaders to drive completion of surveys for a more complete look at the organization and to help remove barriers to make it easier for employees to participate.
Set Your Data Collection Timeline
The change management effort is not finished when the project ends. Outline a plan early in the project to include continual measurement throughout the project lifecycle and at least 90 days after going live. Having a data collection plan at regular intervals throughout and beyond the project will ensure that you have consistent visibility throughout your transformational journey.
Transformation is inherently hard but leveraging change analytics can provide the insights needed to navigate new ways of working and improve outcomes.
Ready to upgrade your change capabilities with change analytics? Avaap Change Academy’s Exploring Change Analytics is an engaging virtual instructor-led workshop that provides participants with an introduction to change analytics and explores how available data can be leveraged in change management practices.
Erin Cavrak is a senior analyst in Avaap's organizational transformation solutions practice. She is a certified Avaap Change Lead with experience supporting public sector and higher education organizations through complex technical transformations. Erin specializes in communications, change engagement, and leveraging analytics to support change decisions.