Change Management Risk Assessment - The 2 Key Parameters

The two parameters of any change management risk assessment are
firstly a change legacy assessment; followed by a present
assessment.Legacy assessmentIt is absolute nonsense to contemplate -
let alone commence - a change initiative without serious reference to
your organisations' history of attempting change.Staggeringly, so many
companies - especially in North America - do just that and rush into
their next change initiative without debriefing and without conducting
a change management risk assessment - and specifically without
assessing what did and didn't work last time, and why.You need to get
that knowledge and insight now, right up front as it can help you
repeating past mistakes and failing with this your current
initiative.Your organisations' "change readiness" is best indicated by
your organisations' legacy of change initiatives (both those that
worked and those that didn't work) as it provides an important early
indicator of what lies ahead.You also need to look at the scars left
by successful as well as unsuccessful initiatives as it is crucial to
understand and address the scar tissue left by previous
initiatives.Present assessmentThere are 2 aspects to a "present
assessment": organisational readiness and individual readiness for
change.In this article we are going to focus on the people aspect, as
individual readiness for change is more complex than it may appear:#
Who will be assessed for change readiness# When will they be
assessed?# How will they be assessed and by what criteria?These
questions are addressed by considering the "6 Stages of Concern" which
have been identified by Pat Zigarmi and Judd Hoskstra who are
organisational change experts and co-authors of Ken Blanchard
Companies "Leading People Through Change" programme.They have
co-authored an excellent article: "Leadership strategies for making
change stick" that is based around the results and findings of a major
study conducted by Blanchard in 2008 with over 900 training and HR
leaders as to how they approach change.They emphasise the need for
change leadership's involvement with people at all levels - in other
words engaging with, and working through, the informal networks and
the informal organisation. And it is their conclusion that for change
to "stick", you, as change leader, have to anticipate, un-cover and
address the various layers and levels of concerns as and when they
arise, and these have been identified as 6 stages of concerns:(1)
Information concerns - what is the change and why is it needed?(2)
Personal concerns - how will the change affect me personally and will
I win or lose?(3) Implementation concerns - what do I do first and how
do I manage all the details?(4) Impact concerns - is the effort worth
it and is the change making a difference?(5) Collaboration concerns -
who else should be involved and how do we spread the word?(6)
Refinement concerns - how can we make the change even better?A further
dimension to be considered in any form of individual change readiness
assessment is the "readiness for change gap" that exists between
management and non-management employees.Simply put, the less power and
formal influence an employee has the less informed they will be and
the greater their range of concerns. Research conducted by Jim Walters
Jim Walters, director of customer relations for Rochester Public
Utilities, showed that (in the utility sector) there were 3 main gaps
between management and non management employees:(1) Management
employees are less ready for change than non-management employees.(2)
A significant difference exists between management and non-management
employees' task and impact related concerns for change.(3) Management
employees feel significantly more empowered than non-management
employees.So individual assessments of change readiness need to take
full account of these identified stages of concern and the likely
different perspectives and emphases of non-management employees
compared with management employees - and all of this in the full
context of the change legacy and scar tissue left from previous
attempts at change management.