Surveys Destroy Transformations
Blowing the whistle
Someone has to say it: stop wasting your time on surveys and assessments to figure out the problem. It just makes it worse. There, I said it. I feel better. How about you? No? I’ll elaborate.
The short version is that surveys (into which I’ll bundle traditional assessments and interviews for the purposes of this piece) provide insight, but only on the symptoms of a problem. Surveys tell you how respondents feel and think. This is what people believe. Understanding beliefs – what’s generally attributed to culture – seems productive and that’s where most organizations go astray. ?Successful defeat of a problem (what normal people call "transformation") requires understanding and acting on something deeper that surveys can’t tell you.
?
Don’t believe in beliefs
There is a time and a place for beliefs (in an organization; it’s always okay to believe that one friend won’t show up late this time).
The best one is when creating a vision. When you look to transform your organization, whether fixing a problem or leaping into the future, you create and use beliefs of what should and should not happen. That gives you your ultimate goal, like “increase interdepartmental collaboration”, “speed-up product development time”, “improve employee job satisfaction” or “fuel decision making with better data”.
The worst one is when determining what needs to change to achieve your vision. The “~70% of transformations fail” statistic that most organizations like HBS, McKinsey, and Kotter trumpet place responsibility for failure on issues managing the transformation. These are concepts like “communication”, or “leadership”, or “lack of urgency” – where people believe (and say through surveys) the problems are because that’s where they feel the symptoms. ?While these factors do block transformation, that’s taking Tylenol for the fever without resolving the infection.
Lots of time, little reward
Despite what firms like those based in eastern Massachusetts will sell you, that traditional, survey-based approach to ascertain direction for transformation will cost an inordinate amount of time and money while failing to deliver actionable insight when applied to figuring out how to achieve efficient, sustained change.
You’ll spend months creating and executing surveys and interviews yielding a pool of future-looking beliefs and desires – the symptoms of the issue. This happens even when asking questions about the past (“did training help?”). Plus, survey respondents are usually self-selecting in the most extreme of the overall population; most people don't care enough to complete surveys. Then you spend MORE time and money designing and running a program that may or may not alleviate those symptoms while your underlying issues remain as entrenched as ever.
I’ll continue the earlier “70%” anecdote and do a magic trick at the same time. I’ll tell you something about your company without even knowing who you are: when your organization does an employee survey, the results always point to a desire for more communication. I’m betting leadership reacted by sending more or longer emails – and the organization’s reaction to that was not “oh, they solved the problem!”
The survey identified a concerning symptom, the insight that people feel like they want more communication (or something like they want to know “what’s going on”). But now you need the cause, which could be something as removed from literal communication as nobody trusting leaders outside their own local department and thus constantly feeling there is always information withheld. These root causes are usually very hard to consciously identify.
?
领英推荐
Shine the light the right way
This is when we bring in the surprise guest star. Beliefs drive vision, that’s aspirational. But the right changes come from investigating your organization’s reflection from the “mirror on the wall”: your organization’s culture!
Contrary to what most people believe (ironic, huh?), culture is NOT a system of beliefs or feelings. It is the manifestation of the behaviors driving the organization regardless of formal policy, procedures, expectations, and especially beliefs. It also manifests as many pieces, not one, and even the most radical transformation does not require touching all the pieces (unless you like collateral damage). So how do you address culture to facilitate transformation if surveys are a waste?
I use Prism. When my clients ask me to enable their corporate strategy, I hunt as early as possible for cultural anchors in the form of entrenched and usually unrecognized behaviors, not stated feelings or policy. To do that, I apply my expert-facilitated Paradigm Prism Workshop approach, which in about a month does the following:
?
When surveys do work
Surveys do help sometimes. For example, I achieve actionable insights from surveys when I use them within a transformation initiative to understand the progress of my programs on readiness (before go live) and adoption (after go live). One of the ways to determine if Organizational Change Management (OCM) efforts are working is to survey impacted stakeholders to solicit their views on the following:
Because core OCM work is supposed to primarily address perceptions, here we specifically want beliefs. This insight directs the OCM team on if and how to adjust engagement and education efforts so those impacted are best prepared to demonstrate new ways of working – that’s adoption, the end goal of all OCM work. But these surveys are only as useful as the quality of questions they contain, so make sure you ask the right ones in the right way.
And most importantly, OCM efforts can only take you so far if you don’t identify and replace problematic behaviors first.
?
What now?
Want to see if the Prism is what your organization needs to “unstuck” your transformation? Not sure when or how to properly apply a survey? Whether your organization is a corporate business or a non-profit organization, let’s chat on how OCM can save your organization pain and money while accelerating the time to ROI for your next change.