Test your current readiness for change by clicking the link on your left for a downloadable questionnaire which will help you assess your readiness for change at the outset of a major programme or project.

Before embarking on a large and costly change project, it is important to assess how well prepared the organisation is for each stage in the change process. There are points in the change path are ‘gateways’, and experience shows that moving through them, without addressing the key elements of the previous stage, will have an end result of making the change more difficult, taking more time and costing more money.

The easiest, and most reliable way, of assessing the readiness to change is by surveying the key groups involved at the right time. The downloadable questionnaire is a generic version of a questionnaire aimed at the senior team involved in the change project / programme. Try it out, and see what you score.

The initial gateway at the end of Stage 1 requires the senior team to be ready to involve the wider management group in Stage 2 – Transition Planning. At the end of the Stage 2 you need to make sure your middle managers are ready, and that they have prepared the way for change with the staff that will be affected.

Why Transformation Projects Take Longer, Cost More and Sometimes Fail Outright:

The new NHS IT system for patients’ records has featured prominently in the news recently. It is 2 years behind schedule and looks to be costing twice as much as the original estimate of £6.2 billion. Interestingly, it was not the hardware, software or project management that was highlighted for criticism in the recent National Audit Office (NAO) report, but the way the change was being managed.

The NAO report said significant challenges remained in implementing the IT programme and criticised the failure to win the support of NHS staff. It urged the Department of Health to act to "fully engage" NHS organisations. The chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said:

"If this project is to succeed, it not only has to be delivered on time and to budget, but also win the hearts and minds of the staff who work daily in the NHS. This is not happening. Many staff, including GPs, are alarmed and dispirited by having the new systems imposed by diktat from above. They are also often confused about what the new systems are going to do and when.”

The NAO report said that three out of 10 staff "knew nothing" about the programme, just under half "knew a fair amount" and just one fifth said they knew a "great deal" about the programme. Four per cent of all those questioned said they had "not heard" of the project. Within staff groups, awareness of the project was lowest among doctors, nurses other health workers and highest amongst IT managers, it said.

This is a very high profile project with some of the brightest people in the country working on it. They haven’t wilfully avoided all the good change management principles that are well-known to most business people today. However, when the pressure to deliver intensifies, and costs are escalating, the main casualty in any project is the change management element.

Lack of change management is not restricted to the NHS. Examples from local authorities include:

A city council that has developed several business cases for change, but cannot manage to gain the commitment of all senior managers or a shared vision. The result has been no progress despite compelling data for the proposed changes.
A unitary council that failed to convert its change strategy into a detailed transition plan. The managers within Social Services were never convinced or committed, and the new ICT system was still not being used, 3 years after installation.
A borough council that failed to train the first line managers and help them to lead the new processes. The processes are not working as well as they could, with system and process discipline as the major cause. Several of the benefits from the business case are still to be achieved, and things are ‘in limbo’ rather than moving forward for the next improvement.

Most managers know that managing the change is important (they have been on the training courses), but often it gets overlooked, or sidelined. This happens because:

The leaders of the change team are nervous of explaining the vision as they will be held accountable for the results and may be criticised.
Time pressures mean that communication and engagement become a low priority.
The costs associated with change management are difficult to equate to tangible benefits – “can we get away without doing it and spend the money on more hardware?”.
change management is seen as ‘soft and fluffy’ by project managers – “do we really have to do this?”.
The project picks up a momentum of its own and it becomes ‘too late’ for change management events.
The senior management spotlight is on the project deliverables, creating a task focused environment for all involved.
The team leader doesn’t know exactly what to do at the right time in the change project / programme.

Really successful projects (and there are many in the public sector) have ‘change management’ programmed in from the beginning. Whether is it an IT system upgrade, the introduction of a customer service centre, a move towards a shared service or a new partnership arrangement, the amount of effort put into managing the change will deliver huge benefits.

By their very nature, transformation projects are complex and require the full range of change management activities to be certain of success. There are many toolkits and techniques around, but it can be confusing to know when to use them appropriately, and what elements are the most successful at each stage of the project.

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