Professional Development Blog

Project management inevitably brings about change. Often if the project completes successfully, it can bring about changes in how an organization operates or in how it remains profitable. Therefore, project managers are often change agents.

First, let’s face the facts: 70% of all change initiatives fail to deliver lasting change. Obviously, there is room for improvement. Often organizations emphasize the soft side of change: leadership style, culture, employee involvement. In this article I want to deviate from that and discuss hard factors you should look at to either forecast the likelihood of success or assess a change project that’s in trouble.

We’ll look at DICE:

• D - Duration of the change project or initiative
• I - Integrity and fitness of the team to accomplish the change project
• C - Commitment of both management and employees
• E - Effort of the resources involved in the change initiative

You should assess each DICE element before you launch a change initiative to identify potential problem areas and make necessary adjustments. You can also use DICE after launching a project – to make midcourse corrections if the initiative veers off track.

Duration

Studies show that a long project that is reviewed frequently is more likely to succeed than a short project that isn’t reviewed frequently. Thus, the time between the reviews is more critical for success than a project’s life span. Every 2-3 weeks is good. Tie them to milestones.
Review milestones in a formal manner with sponsor and project team. Has achieving the milestone had the desired effect on the company? Discuss problems the team faced. Determine how the accomplishment will affect the next phase.

Integrity

Senior managers are often reluctant to assign star performers to the change project because operational work will suffer. But companies must free up the best staff while making sure day-to-day work doesn’t falter. Usually star performers will go the extra mile to make sure their usual work doesn’t lapse.

1. Teams must be cohesive and well-led. “Effective managers of the status quo aren’t necessarily good at changing organizations.” * Team members (and especially leaders) need to have
   1. Good problem-solving skills
   2. Results oriented
   3. Methodical but tolerate ambiguity
   4. Organizationally savvy
   5. Willing to accept responsibility for decisions
   6. Don’t crave the spotlight.
2. Clarify member’s roles, commitments and accountability.
3. Take care not to choose only those who support the change. Managers should put the team together by soliciting names from key colleagues, circulating criteria and looking at top performers in all functions.

Commitment

“Companies must boost the commitment of two different groups of people if they want change projects to take root: They must get visible backing from the most influential executives (c1) who are not necessarily those with the top titles. And they must consider the enthusiasm of the people who must deal with the new systems, processes or ways of working (c2).” *

Effort

No one’s workload should increase more than 10%. If it does, morale will fall and conflicts will arise.

Start by ridding the team of nonessential responsibilities. Review all projects and prioritize those that are critical to the change. Bring in temp workers, maybe retired managers, for a short time.

Calculating DICE Scores

Grade each on a 1-4 scale using fractions if necessary. The lower the score, the better.

Duration

Ask: Do formal project reviews occur regularly? If the project will take more than two months to complete, what is the average time between reviews?

Integrity of performance

Ask: Is the team leader capable? How strong are team members’ skills and motivations?

Senior Management Commitment (c1)

Ask: Do senior executives regularly communicate the reason for the change and the importance of its success? Is the message convincing? Is the message consistent, both across the top management team and over time? Has top management devoted enough resources to the change program?

Local-level commitment (c2)

Ask: Do the employees most affected by the change understand the reason for it and believe it’s worthwhile? Are they enthusiastic and supportive or worried and obstructive?

Effort

Ask: What is the percentage of increased effort that employees must make to implement the change effort? Does the incremental effort come on top of a heavy workload? Have people strongly resisted the increased demands on them?

Scoring Formula: Duration + (2 * Integrity) + (2 * c1) + c2 + Effort

• Scores 7-12: The project is likely to succeed.
• Scores 15-17: Risks to the project success are rising, particularly as the score approaches 17.
• Scores over 17: The project is extremely risky. Beyond 19, the project is unlikely to succeed.

Maybe by looking at these indicators we can improve introducing change in our organizations, from a 30% success rate to something higher.

* Harold L. Sirkin, Perry Keenan and Alan Jackson. “The Hard Side of Change Management” in Harvard Business Review, 2005.