Page 352 - Managing Change in Organizations

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A framework for assessing capability to change
■ Integration. Here we mean the effective management of initiatives as an over-
all portfolio with a set of overall objectives in view. Also known as a ‘solutions’
approach, we are seeking to assess the extent to which the management of
change takes an integrated view of objectives and purposes.
■ Critical mass. The result of high levels of connectivity, leverage and integration
but, in particular, a perception of confidence in outcomes flowing from the
degree of coherence in the overall design of the change programme and of the
levels of engagement of key stakeholders.

A framework for assessing capability to change

The balance between appropriate structure and local determinism represents
both a tension between central control of change and local autonomy, and ten-
sion between strategy, ambition and centrally determined objectives and emer-
gent or organic change. The framework will need to take this into account as part
of the judgement of organizational change capability.
The logical thinking behind the framework may be summarized as follows.
The more ambitious the change the more likely it is of success given the opera-
tion of a robust change architecture achieving high levels of the characteristics
described above. However, this holds only if the benefits sought are both deliv-
ered via that change architecture and outweigh the costs of change, including the
likely destabilization of the organization. But note that the change architecture
provides directly for that risk management issue to be addressed.
It follows that we need to consider the rate of change being attempted. Are we
looking at radical, or so-called ‘big bang’, changes or is a more incremental
approach envisaged. In reality this forms part of the judgement about the level
of ambition in change but just as obviously radical change demands more of all
stakeholders. Actually it may be that the more important distinction is between
imposed change and those developed within the organization. There may well be
more to do in the definition of the level of ambition in change with these dis-
tinctions in mind, but at the moment the approach seems sufficient. In any

event the managerial issue relates to making a judgement about whether the pro-
posed changes are achievable and it is to that end that this model is proposed as
a means of helping managers to handle major changes.
Using the questions shown in the appendix which follows, the model is
deployed through assessing whether the five ‘performance characteristics’ of
change architecture are sufficient to provide for the level of ambition in any
given set of change proposals given that a comprehensive change architecture
has been established. A robust change architecture is therefore defined as both
comprehensive in scope and one which is operated to a high performance level
as assessed through the performance characteristics. Each is important but each
can be worked on in different ways and on different time horizons. Thus reso-
nance and appropriate structure is about decision making. Resonance relates to
the decisions being taken as part of the immediate change initiatives.
Appropriate structure is rather longer term. It is about whether decisions around
performance over time have been soundly based. However, some elements are
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