One area neglected by most change programmes is the impact of that change on individuals rather than teams or departments. Every change affect everyone in some way. Understanding this impact is vital to the success of any change programme.
The simple Change Impact Assessment below is designed to help you identify where the change may affect individual staff. It is best done sitting down with each person and asking them the questions and writing down their answers. You could do this by job group as well but I find that the actual process of discussing the impact of the change with each person is beneficial. Sometimes their understanding of the planned change is skewed or based on rumour or gossip. It is a great way to correct these misunderstandings.
Role pre-change
- Role purpose. What is the purpose of your position? Why are you employed? What wouldn't happen if you weren't there?
- Values. What is important to you in a job? What values motivate you to do this role?
- Skills. What skills are required to be able to successfully do your job? Which of these skills is critical to the success of this role? Where are your skill strengths?
- Behaviours. What behaviours are necessary to be a success at this role? What behaviours would be unhelpful? How do your behaviours help you?
- Place. Where is it best to be in order to do this role? How does your current location help or hinder your ability to do your job?
- Process. What processes does your role participate in? How do these processes help or hinder you to do your job?
- People. Who do you need to work with in order to do your job? How do they help or hinder you?
By asking these questions you will get a picture of their role with all its motivations and frustrations. Listen carefully to the negatives or where they identify challenges in doing this role. This will be helpful for pitching the benefits of the change for them.
When you have a clear picture of their role, explain in broad terms the planned change. Don't get into details. Then repeat the exercise as follows. They should be the ones answering. Avoid the temptation to explain for them. This exercise is about the process of understanding the impact of the change. Note also that depending on the nature of the change, some answers will simply be "No change".
Role Post-Change
- Purpose. How will the purpose of your role change?
- Values. What new values will be needed? What values will no longer be relevant?
- Skills. What new skills will be needed to be a success? What skills are no longer needed?
- Behaviours. What new behaviours are needed? What behaviours no longer matter?
- Place. What might need to change about where you work in order to adapt?
- Process. How will the planned change affect your involvement in different processes? What will need to change?
- People. How will the planned change affect who you work with? What impact will that have on your work?
Remember the purpose of the Change Impact Assessment is to better understand the impact of the change on individuals and identify their concerns. The conversation is the point even if you already know the answers! When you have done a few of these, you will start to see themes or concerns which you can then use to review the change or make adjustments to limit the impact.
Your small improvement for today is to complete the Change Impact Assessments for your team.