# The Change Maturity Model
“How will this carpet look in our living room?” “Is this hike good for the dog?” “Is that new restaurant expensive?”
These questions are simple assessments. For most, a yes/no answer suffices, and the assessment becomes an opinion (or maybe, an expert opinion).
For more complicated questions like whether or not unemployment will rise, experts factor in historical precedents, multiple leading and/or lagging indicators, and the key players within the system to make an accurate assessment. Put these variables into a model or framework, and your assessment becomes legitimized. Using frameworks often conveys a sense of legitimacy to people because an idea becomes rooted in a larger context – perhaps even academically validated elsewhere.
As consultants, we have the privilege of informally or formally assessing a client’s capacities. Assessing the maturity of a department, organization, or enterprise is an interesting dance. We are hired to elevate our clients through strategic thought partnerships and superb delivery. While doing so, we develop core relationships with the teams we work with and the clients that hired us. These relationships are, in effect, what makes Propeller consultants successful, and often retained, with our core clients. Yet an assessment often can be a discussion of how a client struggles in key areas, and that can be a delicate endeavor.
So, when a trusted client comes to us at the end of a project and asks, “Being that Propeller has worked on our highest-priority projects in the past few years, can you put together an assessment of how we are performing as an organization in change management?”, it can feel like a test of the relationship. How do we provide an expert assessment that is valuable, honest, and something that the client can build on as they move forward?
# Change Management Frameworks & Models
A maturity model measures the ability of an organization to pursue continuous improvement in a particular discipline.
At Propeller, our People & Change Practice developed a Change Maturity Model that evaluates an organization in three key areas that define successful change management: Knowledge and Rigor, Organizational Alignment, and Effective Execution. Each of these simultaneously builds on the other (hence, the circle) and is composed of four indicators in each area.
1. Knowledge and Rigor
- What It Assesses? The efficacy of the tools change managers currently use, the engagement of leadership in change, and how change is measured.
- Areas Assessed: Change Adoption Analytics, Process & Tool Efficiency, Practitioner Competency, and Leadership Awareness & Engagement
2. Organizational Alignment
- What It Assesses: The placement, integration, and alignment of change management across projects and portfolios, and ultimately, the operating model and how it affects change delivery.
- Areas Assessed: Project & Change Integration, Change Management Structure, Organizational Op Model, and Managing Change Saturation
3. Effective Execution
- What It Assesses? The allocated resources, the effectiveness of CM project planning, and the communications, training, and delivery.
- Areas Assessed: Resourcing Effectiveness, Project Design, Communications Delivery, and Training Delivery
# How the Change Maturity Assessment Works
Having a model is the first step, but your assessment doesn’t end there. If it did, you’d effectively guess a score for each of the 12 indicators (low, medium, high) and turn it in.
For our assessment, we turned this model into a scorecard, with 1-4 metrics defining each indicator. For example, under Project Design, we assessed the organization’s performance in change management planning, stakeholder engagement, and change adoption. For each of these three metrics, we detailed a current state, ideal state, change medium (people, process, technology), maturity level, trend, business impact, and a set of recommendations.
You can download the assessment model here.
By driving to that level of detail, we can hone our scores with structure, anecdotes, and at times, quantifiable data. Additionally, this detail allows our clients to arrive at specific recommendations for each of the 12 indicators. In the example above, we noted that change often stalls out over time and a lack of reinforcement leaves changes floundering after go-live. The scorecard allows our clients to sort and filter at their will, providing options to dive deep into ‘low-hanging fruit’ items, or to address what are impactful at a low cost.
Very few organizations score medium or high in every indicator in this model. But even if you score more low scores than medium/high ones, it’s okay. Our presentation and scorecard are backed by a framework (that is backed by expert change management principles), and open the conversation for actionable next steps.
To thrive in change, organizations must first understand the opportunities or gaps within current processes and structures. Only then, can organizations zoom in on a particular area and identify desired outcomes. It’s like a microscope, increasing the resolution on any one component provides greater clarity.
At Propeller, we’ve leveraged years of successful change delivery and packaged it up into a downloadable maturity model to walk you through the most important questions when assessing your organization’s maturity level.
Is what you’re doing working? Download the Change Management Maturity Assessment to find out.
