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Organisational Change Management Maturity

Change Management Maturity is a key element to true organisational agility; however, maturity is being developed in an ad-hoc manner, with few companies reporting consistently high scores across Strategic Change Leadership, Business Change Readiness, and Project Change Management.

The Change Management Institute is an independent professional organisation for Change Managers and the promotion of the Change Management community. This notfor-profit organisation was established in 2005, to promote and develop the practice of change Management internationally.

The Change Management Institute is committed to meeting the professional development needs of change managers through the provision of networking, education and accreditation. With change a constant reality for most organisations today, the demand for change management is increasing. The Change Management Institute helps organisations and individuals respond professionally and effectively to this demand.

As the independent professional body for change management practitioners we actively support all forms of research into the discipline. It is research like this that helps us understand more about the value that change management adds and how we need to develop the profession and our practitioner's capabilities to continue to meet the needs of business, government and our community.

The Change Management Institute welcomes the opportunity to partner with Carbon Group to conduct this international survey. We hope you can use these insights to improve the change outcomes for your organisation.

Executive Summary

Today’s organisations are dealing with complexity and uncertainty on a scale that has never been seen before, economic and social upheaval is changing the game faster than we can learn it.

Unfortunately, many companies are designed for business as usual, for a time when there is no change; when we are running efficiently and at full speed. Change is often viewed as something to be overcome, controlled and a disruption to this known world, rather than the new ‘norm’ that needs to be managed

This new ‘norm’ means we have to develop agility to be able to constantly adapt and change to meet economic, compliance and competitive challenges. A truly agile organisation is able to meet these challenges through projects that are nimble and constantly assessed and adjusted by a knowledgeable and informed leadership, and in a way that is routine and normal for employees.

The position of the Change Management Institute is that organisational change management is more than just ‘the people side of projects’. It should be viewed as the approach the whole organisation uses to manage change well. The Change Management Institute, in partnership with Carbon Group Change Consultants has researched the capabilities required by organisations to become truly ‘change agile’. This work has enabled us to develop and test a holistic Organisational Change Maturity Model (OCMM).

A Capability Maturity Model is used to describe the behaviours, practices and processes of an organisation that enable reliable and sustainable outcomes. The OCMM has 5 levels of maturity across three key organisational change categories (Strategic Change Leadership, Business Change Readiness and Project Change Management) and is an ideal tool to assess current capability levels and develop approaches to develop further maturity.

Our 2011 global survey used this model to allow Change Management Practitioners to assess their organisations capabilities and maturity, this White Paper details the results.

Key takeouts from the survey are:

  • Organisations often build different mismatched levels of maturity for each of the organisational change categories.
  • No organisation reported an overall maturity level greater than three.
  • A small number (5%) of respondents reported strong individual capabilities at the
    top maturity level (5 Optimised) but surprisingly only 14% of respondents report strong individual capabilities at the lowest maturity levels.
  • Smaller organisations rated more highly in overall maturity than larger organisations
  • Strategic Change Leadership capabilities are generally more mature than the Business and Project Change categories.
  • Project Change Management capability is the easiest to build & increases in line with the organisations strength in Project Management.

It is clear that there are a many difficulties and obstacles to achieving ‘Change Agility’ for an organisation, particularly for larger and more complex companies. However, complimentary data analysis carried out by Change Track Research is able to show that high performing organisations do not experience the dips in productivity currently considered normal for change initiatives.

Leaders can develop substantial competitive advantage by building up the resilience of their organisations to manage constant change.

Background

The Change Management Institute in partnership with Carbon Group, Change Consultants has been researching the capabilities required by organisations to become truly 'change agile'. Over the past two years, this research has enabled us to develop and test a maturity model for holistic organisational change. A global survey, conducted in late 2011, provided the opportunity to broaden that testing and the results are the subject of this paper.

The survey was used to assess:

  • An organisations current capability
  • The relative importance of the capability for the organisation
  • The relative difficulty for the organisation to achieve the capability

The survey was advertised via a number of relevant online discussion boards and to the Change Management Institute community. The survey was open for a period of 6 weeks from 7th November to 15th December 2011.

259 people responded to the survey; primarily Change Management professionals from America, Australia and Europe. They had from one to over ten years' experience and came from a wide range of organisations from under 1000 to over 30,000 employees.

Introduction

The position of the Change Management Institute is that organisational change management is more than just ‘the people side of projects’. It should be viewed as the approach the whole organisation uses to manage change well.

Dean and Linda Anderson in their book ‘Beyond Change Management’ articulate this well, believing that we often manage the transition of projects rather than the evolution of the organisation.

Organisational Change Maturity is much broader than the sum of its project change parts.

An organisation that is mature in its management of change is building a clear organisational vision, actively leading and monitoring change from the top, and designing and managing smaller, adapting change initiatives based on the feedback and collaboration of the whole organisation.

In partnership, the Change Management Institute and Carbon Group Change Consultants have researched the organisational capabilities that create agility and adaptability. This research has resulted in a maturity model for holistic organisational change, first published in the book, The Agile Change Methodology.

Organisational Change Maturity Model (OCMM)

This Organisational Change Maturity Model is based on the same five-level, multi-dimensional approach as that used for project, software and process capability maturity.

Capability Maturity Model

CMM describe the behaviours, practices and processes of an organisation that enables them to reliably and sustainably produce required outcomes.

  1. Initial (chaotic, ad hoc, individual heroics) - the starting point a new capability
  2. Repeatable - the capability has developed such that it is possible to repeat effectively
  3. Defined - the capability is defined to a level that it has become standard across the business
  4. Managed - the capability has matured to a level that it is quantitatively managed and reported against agreed metrics
  5. Optimised - The capability has been optimised and is providing competitive advantage to the organisation

Change Management Categories

Initial research was carried out with a number of large and small organisations in Australia, to understand the areas that an organisation needed to focus on to develop Organisational Change Management maturity.

Examining the approaches they were taking led us to identify three critical categories of a change agile organisation:

  • Strategic Change Leadership (architects and drivers)
  • Business Change Readiness (receivers and beneficiaries)
  • Project Change Management (developers and implementers)

Together these elements define the areas of focus required by an organisation to manage change.

Management Categories

Organisational Change Maturity Levels

A second period of research then identified the different levels of maturity within each of the categories; and the capabilities that would be evident at each of those levels. This led to the development of the maturity model shown below, and is the basis for the survey and the analysis in this document.

Level 1
Initial		Level 2
Repeatable		Level 3
Defined		Level 4
Managed		Level 5
Optimised		Organisational Change Maturity Model
Project Sponsorship, Executives are tracking Change KPI's and prioritisation processes in place Organisational Change leadership, accurate feedback constant assessment to change targets Executive change office, Board reporting, Agile project Governance Strategic Change Leadership
Driving
(Should/Why?)
Repeatable communication and training processes available for business Business Units have view of Project change (Heat Map) and ability to influence approach Standards are in place to rollout change and quickly and consistently. Feedback to adjust and manage effectiveness Business areas comfortable with constant change Leaders and managers effectively driving Business Change Readiness
Receiving
(How/When?)
Ad-hoc project change Management (focus on Comms & Training) Change managers on projects, Change methodology in place, most projects using Change and Project methodologies linked, Change training for Project Managers Projects designed and assessed around Change management vision and inputs Smaller initiatives, constant assessment of an ongoing Change portfolio Project Change Management
Implementing
(What/Who?)

Carbon Group Pty Ltd – Change Consultants, Version 2.0

Strategic Change Leadership

Strategic change leadership outlines the capabilities required to lead an organisation through change. This is often viewed as the domain of the MBA, as a side subject, but is vitally important for all leaders and boards in today’s turbulent world.

McKinsey & Co in their research have spent a great deal of time explaining ‘The new normal’ that companies are experiencing, and a changing leadership approach with requires far greater flexibility and a different way of working for top teams

Organisational change maturity in this category requires that all executive leaders support the needs of an agile organisation; that active sponsorship is in place to articulate the vision and drive the change; that the culture supports innovation and it is safe to fail; that accurate feedback is available to enable them to react and adapt.

Boards must ensure they have a thorough understanding of how change is managed in the organisation, that they have the correct measures and information to challenge and recalibrate strategy implementation with their executives.

An organisation that has developed to full maturity has full executive sponsorship of change and is constantly accessing customer and employee feedback to review and adjust change portfolios.

Business Change Readiness

Business Change Readiness outlines the capabilities required to ensure that the rank and file of the organisation to deal with constant and complex change Business readiness and involvement is vitally important to avoid the risks associated with unsustainable, badly designed, transitioned and integrated change.

Maturity in Business Change Readiness begins with the recognition that it is not the project that ‘owns’ the changes in the business, rather each area has a responsibility to manage and control the change being received. Managers need to be clear about the best ways to manage change, their focus is often on maintaining the status quo, rather than on how to constantly change or adjust their areas of responsibility.

A fully mature organisation has spent time and effort building the capacity and capability of their middle management and employees to enable them to constantly 9 shape, adopt and integrate change.

Project Change Management

Project Change Management describes the capability of an organisation to effectively design and transition project outcomes into the business. It is the easiest element to understand and often the first area in which an organisation builds Change capability.

The majority of the 2,500 Change Management Institute subscribers would classify themselves as managing change within projects.

Developing capability in Project Change Management starts with an understanding that the ‘people’ side of projects should be addressed with training and communications. This then develops through to an optimised situation where project change feedback and collaboration is leveraged to accurately initiate, inform, design and direct the approaches taken.

There are a number of recognised methodologies that have been developed to help projects manage the people side of change. However, a change methodology will not in itself ensure effective change, the change process is interactive, complex and non linear and requires the support of experienced change practitioners who are able to test scenarios and work effectively with key business stakeholders and leaders to adjust the approach.

The Survey Structure

The survey questions were structured to reflect the Organisational Change Maturity Model described above.

Each of the three categories (Strategic Change Leadership, Business Change Readiness and Project Change Management) has a set of capability statements that would be in place for each of the maturity levels.

Respondents were asked to score these capability statements from 1 (low) to 5 (high) depending on how well their organisation exhibited this capability.

The Survey Structure

Overall Survey Results

The survey results have been presented in the following way:

  • Organisational Maturity Results: Where the results have been averaged for each organisation, to provide a view of the overall and category specific maturity scores.
  • Capability Maturity Results: Where the results are averaged across the capability, to provide a view of the most mature capabilities across all organisations.

Note: An individual statement, such as ‘Change Leadership is assessed as a key executive capability’ (Maturity level 5) may be rated strongly for the organisation; however, many other statements at the lower levels can be rated weaker, which brings down the overall score for organisational maturity.

Organisational Maturity Results

Level 3 (Defined) was the highest overall maturity level achieved by any of the organisations

The survey results show that organisations do not develop maturity at the same level across all the change management categories. This impacts their overall maturity level.

It is possible that where a capability is missing in one category, another category may develop increased maturity to fill the gap.

Two organisations achieved a maturity level of 4 for Strategic Change Leadership & Business Change Readiness; however, they reported lower maturity at the other categories.

Graph
Smaller organisations generally reported higher overall maturity than larger organisations

It may be more straightforward for a smaller organisation to develop maturity in their management of change; being easier for them to put their arms around projects as they relate to the business, gain honest feedback and look at the change holistically.

As the organisation becomes larger and more complex, this early agility seems to be lost, managers and leaders struggle to take control and more formal approaches are required.

When examining the average maturity levels across the 3 change categories none of the organisations managed to reach a maturity of 4 or 5.

Organisations that scored highest in change leadership fell in the range of 5,000 to 30,000 employees.

Project Change management capability increases in line with the organisations strength in Project Management

However, even for those organisations that have a strong Project Management capability, the maturity of change management within this group is still low.

Capability Maturity Results

Only 14% of respondents report full capability at the lowest maturity levels

Each of the capabilities was rated on how strongly it was being exhibited (1 to 5). As expected, the numbers of respondents reporting strong cap ability decreases at the higher maturity levels.

A small number (5%) of respondents reported a top score of 5 at the highest level of maturity (Optimised), but surprisingly only 14% of respondents report a top score at the lowest maturity levels.

Maturity Level 1

59% of respondents have developed a strong capability (score of 3 plus)

35% of respondents have developed a very strong capability (score of 4 plus)

maturity level 1

Maturity Level 2

48% of respondents have developed a strong capability (score of 3 plus)

25% of respondents have developed a very strong capability (score of 4 plus)

maturity level 2

Maturity Level 3

46% of respondents have developed a strong capability (score of 3 plus)

24% of respondents have developed a very strong capability (score of 4 plus)

Maturity Level 4

36% of respondents have developed a strong capability (score of 3 plus)

15% of respondents have developed a very strong capability (score of 4 plus)

Maturity Level 5

30% of respondents have developed a strong capability (score of 3 plus)

13% of respondents have developed a very strong capability (score of 4 plus)

maturity level 5

Overall Category Results

Project Change Management capability is the easiest to build for the organisation

Often the first step in the maturity journey is to build up Change Management within projects, for instance within an IT department focusing on technology projects.

Issues arise where this is the only area to build capability, as business readiness and change leadership report low scores, which could result in sponsors delegating leadership responsibilities to the projects.

Capability decreases as maturity increases.

This table displays the results of respondents that have developed a strong capability (3 plus score) at each of the maturity levels.

Strategic Change Leadership capabilities are consistently rated higher than the Business and Project Change categories

Many of the Strategic Leadership capabilities are not just Change related and are therefore well understood throughout the senior management levels. It is not until level 5 that the maturity scores drop, due to the changing nature of strategic change leadership to support true organisational agility.

Business change readiness is rated lower and highlights the stresses and issues associated with being between leadership that are driving and the projects that are implementing the change. There is opportunity in this category to build capability to “own” change.

This table displays the results of respondents that have developed a very strong capability (4 plus score) at each of the maturity levels

Strategic Change Leadership capabilities are consistently rated higher than the Business and Project Change categories

Many of the Strategic Leadership capabilities are not just Change related and are therefore well understood throughout the senior management levels. It is not until level 5 that the maturity scores drop, due to the changing nature of strategic change leadership to support true organisational agility.

Business change readiness is rated lower and highlights the stresses and issues associated with being between leadership that are driving and the projects that are implementing the change. There is opportunity in this category to build capability to “own” change.

Strategic Change Leadership capabilities are scored very highly at the level 2 and 3 maturity levels

Feedback from the survey indicates this may be related to the questions asked in this category that more correctly describes a level of baseline maturity, for example:

  • Change widely viewed as a 'point in time' activity
  • Some prioritisation of projects, but only when overload reached
  • Change reported only as a project deliverable

This will be reviewed for the next version of the Organisational Change Maturity Model.

Overall Organisational Strengths

Statements that display consistently high scores provide an insight into base level organisational change management strengths.

The following statements highlight the capabilities most often rated highly by the respondents.

These may indicate the easiest Change Management activities for an organisation to implement base level maturity for an organisation.

Strategic Change Leadership
Maturity Level 2
  • Change is generally understood, but often viewed with cynicism due to previous false starts
Maturity Level 3
  • Change initiatives are directly and easily linked to organisational strategy
  • Change widely viewed as a 'point in time' activity
  • Some prioritisation of projects, but only when overload reached
  • Change reported only as a project deliverable
Maturity Level 4
  • Change Initiatives and progress are frequently communicated at leadership forums/channels
Business Change Readiness
Maturity Level 1
  • Ad-hoc communication processes built by and to the needs of each project
  • Business capacity is focused on BAU and limited to support change effort
Maturity Level 2
  • Business managers are involved at business case development (impact assessment)
Maturity Level 3
  • Yearly 'all of business' climate survey with transparent results
Project Change Management
Maturity Level 1
  • Financial KPIs are measured
  • Change Management methodology is ad-hoc and dependent on resources (often training and communications)
  • Change management resourcing is ad-hoc and recruitment is aligned to project
  • Projects are largely run independently of others (Change activities are not aligned to other initiatives)
Maturity Level 2
  • Change Budget is available in project business case, but limited to Training and/or Communication

Overall Organisational Weaknesses

Consistently low scores provide an insight into areas that have low maturity and need Development.

Across the sample the following questions were given consistently low scores by the respondents.

This correlates with the maturity levels of the model and provides the areas where there is most opportunity to improve across the board.

Strategic Change Leadership
Maturity Level 4
  • Monthly assessment of Change Key Performance Indicators across the organisation
  • The change resources can clearly identify the impacts across the organisation
  • Organisational Change Management is a recognised capability of the business
  • Change is considered a core competency
Maturity Level 5
  • Comprehensive change feedback is available for executive decision making and refinement (not just change resources)
  • Change feedback assessment and action is taken to determine viability of initiatives
  • Change Key Performance Indicators and progress are reported to the Board (quarterly)
  • An executive level office is in place to manage change across the organisation
Business Change Readiness
Maturity Level 2
  • Business capacity is in place to ideally support change effort (overtime, spare resources, secondment)
Maturity Level 3
  • Managers understand Change theory and its application within their business
  • Effective brokering management processes in place to discuss and communicate business issues and policies
Maturity Level 4
  • Organisational structure is organic and adept at service to the nature of change
  • Managers have the skills to lead teams during change (proactive and integrated/inspires)
  • Organisation thru 'self survey for the business to test readiness to change and receive feedback on multiple projects to guide pace and timing
Maturity Level 5
  • Monthly review of progress across projects and impacts
Project Change Management
Maturity Level 3
  • Project Managers have the skills to integrate OCM deliverables into their plans
Maturity Level 4
  • Change Budget is audited as adequate to meet KPI's and impact complexity
  • Change Impact Analysis is supported by a holistic strategy
Maturity Level 5
  • Change KPI's are reported 3-12 months after project implementation

Appendix A - Survey Demographics

The survey was advertised via seven relevant online discussion boards (via LinkedIn) and to the Change Management Institute community. The survey was open for a period of 6 weeks from 7th November to 15th December 2011. 250 people responded to the survey. Some did not complete all of the questions, as such we have used a percentage figure to ensure we can compare effectively

Location

A large number of countries were represented, although the majority of respondents were from Australia and the United Kingdom

Americas: Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Ecuador, United States America

Europe: Croatia, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom

Other: India, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe

Australian states: ACT, SA, WA, QLD, VIC, NSW

Location

85% of respondents identified themselves as Change Management professionals. The majority (52%) were consultants or contractors providing Change Management Services, with 33% being internal change managers.

location 2

Experience

The majority (37%) of respondents
had over 10 years’ experience in Change Management Internal change managers were more likely (58%) to be less experienced, 1- 5 years External Change managers were more likely (78%) to be more experienced, 5 plus years

Organisation Size

The majority of respondents (29%) worked for organisations of less than 1,000 employees. Over half of respondents worked for organisations of less than 5,000
employees.

Internal Change Managers were more likely to be employed by Organisations of 1,000 to 5,000 employees

Larger organisations (5,000 plus) had a 30/70 split of internal and external change managers

Note: External Change management consultants, were asked to respond on behalf of an organisation that they know well

location 4

2011 Survey Statements

Strategic Change Leadership
Maturity Level 1
  • No questions
Maturity Level 2
  • Change is generally understood, but often viewed with cynicism due to previous false starts
Maturity Level 3
  • Feedback to senior leadership is available but limited to informal networks
  • Executives are able to monitor Change Initiatives using specific KPI's and dashboards
  • Change initiatives are directly and easily linked to organisational strategy
  • Change widely viewed as a 'point in time' activity
  • Some prioritisation of projects, but only when overload reached
  • Change reported only as a project deliverable
  • Organisational Change Management is formally recognised in the organisational structure
Maturity Level 4
  • Executives are effective at actively owning (sponsoring) Change Initiatives
  • Change Initiatives and progress are frequently communicated at leadership forums/channels
  • Change widely recognised as a 'Normal', successful ongoing process
  • A formal change feedback process in place for Board and Executive
  • Business case for ongoing prioritisation of change impacts across the organisation
  • Monthly assessment of Change Key Performance Indicators across the organisation
  • Organisational Change Management is a recognised job family (job description, career progression)
Maturity Level 5
  • Change Leadership is assessed as a key executive capability
  • Change Initiatives are made personal ('Walk the talk') by all Leadership
  • Comprehensive change feedback is available for executive and board - open and honest (not managed by middle management)
  • Change feedback assessed early & often to determine viability of initiatives
  • Organisational change impacts and progress are reported to the Board (quarterly)

Project Change Management

Project Change Management
Maturity Level 1
  • Financial KPIs are measured
  • Change Management methodology is ad-hoc and dependent on resources (often training and communications)
  • Change management resourcing is ad-hoc and recruitment is aligned to project
  • Projects are largely run independently of others (Change activities are not aligned to other initiatives)
  • Change Managers report to report(s) of Project Manager
  • Project Managers understand Change principles but lack methodology
  • Change Budget is available in project business case, but limited to Training and/or Communication
  • Single Change Management methodology in place and used consistently across Projects
  • Change management resourcing is managed within the organisation (often with capped numbers)
  • Change Managers have a single reporting line to the Project Manager
Maturity Level 2
  • Project Managers have the skills to integrate OCM deliverables into project plans
  • Change Managers are involved in business case development
  • Non-financial Change KPIs are measured
  • OCM methodology integrated into Project Management methodology
  • Flexible resourcing model (Mix of in-house and contractors) and a recognised community of practice
  • Projects are run on one large complex implementation, change impacts are managed
  • Change Managers have dual reporting lines to Project Manager & Business leaders
  • Monitoring of progress (budget available) 3 months after project implementation
Maturity Level 3
  • Project Managers have the skills to integrate OCM deliverables into project plans
  • Change Managers are involved in business case development
  • Non-financial Change KPIs are measured
  • OCM methodology integrated into Project Management methodology
  • Flexible resourcing model (Mix of in-house and contractors) and a recognised community of practice
  • Projects are run on one large complex implementation, change impacts are managed
  • Change Managers have dual reporting lines to Project Manager & Business leaders
  • Monitoring of progress (budget available) 3 months after project implementation
Maturity Level 4
  • Project Managers have the skills to design & manage project deliverables to actively support change impacts
  • Change Budget is audited as adequate to meet KPI's and impact complexity in business case
Maturity Level 5
  • Organisational Change KPIs are measured as part of holistic strategy
  • Projects are designed to smaller, quicker change driven components where possible
  • Change KPI's are supported 12 months after project implementation

References

Carbon Group Pty Ltd, www.carbon-group.com

Change Track Research, www.changetracking.com

Dean Anderson & Linda Ackerman Anderson (2010). Beyond Change Management: How to achieve breakthrough results through conscious change leadership. San Francisco: Pfeiffer

Anat Hassner Nahmias & Caroline Perkins (2011), The Agile Change Methodology: A researched organizational change maturity model helping organizations become agile, a proven change management method, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing

McKinsey&Co. (2010 Number 1). McKinsey Quarterly. Strategy and Leadership in turbulent times.

The Author

Caroline Perkins is the managing director of Carbon Group, a specialist change consultancy since 2000. She has over 20 years experience of successful strategic change, consulting to Australian and international companies, working with senior levels of organisations to develop and advise on complex change initiatives.

Caroline’s experience has enabled her to develop a unique working view of organisational change and its associated levers of culture, structure, process, knowledge management, technology and employee capability, which was key to the development of the OCCM.

She has an MBA and a Graduate Certificate in Change Management from the Australian Graduate School of Management and is an Accredited Change Manager. Caroline is also the founding member, President and Spokesperson of the Change Management Institute.

Thank you

The Change Management Institute and Carbon Group would like to thank everyone who took part in the survey. Their feedback was that the survey was valuable and helped them to think about the way change was implemented within their organisation in a holistic manner. They also reported that the structure and questions were a little difficult and time consuming to answer; we shall adjust for later studies.

For further information, please contact the Change Management Institute: [email protected]

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