Projects fail at measuring success

Unstable financial footing

While driving to dinner yesterday, the news station on the radio aired a segment on Adobe’s surging stock price – a double-digit bump thanks to a rise in their revenue forecast because of demand for and sales of their AI-powered tools. Made sense. But then the reporter made a dangerous comment.

She said, “High sales are showing the adoption of Adobe’s AI tools”. It is correct that adoption positively correlates to success, so soaring adoption would support an optimistic estimate of Adobe’s stock value. The problem is using the initiation of change (sales) as a signal for its success. Sales are not adoption. I see this false equivalency all too often from business leaders executing transformations.

Because they define and measure adoption wrong, they measure success wrong and draw incorrect, potentially harmful, conclusions.

It ain’t over till it’s over

Turns out Yogi Berra should have managed corporations, not just baseball teams. Let’s be honest, when an organization wants change to either solve a problem or get ahead, leaders fall into the trap of marking success by measuring superficial milestones like downloads, log-ins, and sales. Worst of all is when they define and track success based on creation of the change (build the software, create the policy, rewrite roles and responsibilities, etc.) and get to the point when you expect it to make a difference (Go Live day, Closing day, etc.). Those are key milestones. But success is achieved only when success is truly achieved and completing a proper Organizational Change Management (OCM) journey is how you know it’s really over.

?

Here are the five key OCM outcomes whose measurement truly indicates success.

Note I’ve based this on the International Standard for Change Management created by the Association of Change Management Professionals, the only organization created by, and certifying solely, veteran and proven organizational change management practitioners, like me!

1. Readiness: The preparedness of an organization to understand, accept, effectively handle, and integrate impending change and associated impacts. This is what OCM programs via engagement, communication, and training setup.
2. Adoption: Choosing to accept and demonstrate a new way of thinking or acting, despite impact. Adoption occurs when stakeholder behavior is what the vision of future state intends it to be, and it usually requires cultural shifts to be enabled. Following the Adobe example, having the software is not adoption. Adoption for Adobe is users successfully creating their desired images with Adobe AI features.
3. Benefits: The quantitative and qualitative, measurable and non-measurable ROI outcomes resulting from a change and after impacts have been mitigated. Sales figures do go into this, I don’t want to totally rain on Adobe’s parade, especially since sales figures and demand are indicators of likely sustained (see #5) success. But that’s only part of it.
4. Future State: The condition at the time when the benefits have been realized and impacts are in the past. This occurs significantly after the point at which the changes take effect because the future, by definition, lacks the past. This term is what I see wrongly defined most often by projects because they fail to realize they cannot exist in future state when vestiges of the past (current state, the condition at the time the change is initiated) remain for any impacted stakeholder. Future state means those impacted no longer feel change. New ways of working simply are “our ways of working” and this is the only point when a project should be considered “over”.
5. Sustainability: The ability to maintain future state. A leader, versus a manager, doesn’t want to merely arrive at future state; a leader wants to keep reaping the benefits of future state. The organization and both internal and external stakeholders must all be able to only operate according to Future State and enabled to continuously deliver the benefits.

?

But what about the almighty Go Live? That’s just a stop on the road trip through change, and it happens ALL THE WAY BACK between #1 and #2 above. With that in mind, re-read that list of 5 while reflecting on a change you’ve led (or experienced) and compare how much effort was put into the project on each side of Go Live to how many of the 5 outcomes are on each side of Go Live.

?

Graduation

If you still aren’t completely following, think of traditional Go Lives and success measures like graduation, especially college into the full-time workforce. So much time, energy, and focus are put into making it to that degree and there is (rightfully) extreme pomp and circumstance when you get it. But the real work begins once it’s time to use your degree and sink or swim in the real world for decades. At that point, do you care that you have a piece of paper to put on the wall, or do you care that you’re able to earn money by performing well at a job you enjoy? Is the success of your degree that you earned it or what you get out of it?

Now you know how to properly identify what’s worth measuring and use measurement to declare victory or continue the battle. But how do you win in the first place? How can you turn the tide if you’re losing? Let’s chat about how OCM can save your organization pain and money while accelerating the time to ROI and future state for your next change.