How will I know if my change initiative has benefited me? - The Benefit Profile

In considering any step change initiative - in any organisation, in any sector and any location, we need to be asking and seeking answers to these simple questions:

- How am I going to manage all this so that it happens and I succeed?
- How's it going to be different when I've made the change?
- Why am I doing this - how's it going to benefit me?
- How will I know it's benefited me?
- Who's it going to affect and how will they react?
- What can I do to get them "on side"?
- What steps do I have to take to make the changes and get the benefit?
- What are the risks and issues that I'll have to face?

As you create a change initiative, if you don't know with pristine clarity how's it going to benefit your organisation - then you are unlikely to realise it.

Sounds obvious, doesn't it? And I really don't mean to sound so pedantic - but you would be surprised but how many times I have asked the question: "How will it benefit you and how will you know it's benefited you?" - and got a vague or general answer along the lines of "we'll be... bigger... better... closer to our customers... reduce our costs... etc"

The management and monitoring of these processes is key to ensuring that you actually do benefit as an organisation from the planned step change and the new capabilities that the change will be delivering.

Benefit management is the activity of identifying, optimising and tracking the expected benefits from a business change initiative to ensure that they are achieved.

Those Benefits identified need to be defined so that the change initiative can monitor and track their progress. The definition is called the "Benefit Profile."

These should be agreed with the managers of the business areas where they will actually be realised. They can then be managed and controlled - as this is of primary importance to the success of the change initiative.

The definition of a Benefit must pass four critical tests:

(1) Description - what precisely is it?
(2) Observation - what differences should be noticeable before and after?
(3) Attribution - where in the future business operations does it arise?
(4) Measurement - how will it be measured?

And the definitions should include the following:

- The description
- How it will be measured
- Projected changes from the current business processes and operations
- Inter-dependencies with other benefits
- Key performance indicators in the business operations now and for the future
- Explicit linkages, wherever possible, between projects and deliverables
- Dependencies on risks and other programmes or projects
- Financial valuations
- When it is expected to occur and over what period of time will realisation take place

So, to summarise - you need to know:

- What each benefit is?
- What differences will be noticeable before and after?
- Exactly where in the future organisation it will arise?
- How will it be measured?

If you don't know - with pristine clarity - the answers to these questions then how on earth is your change initiative going to benefit your organisation?

Stephen Warrilow: www.strategies-for-managing-change.com