A necessary, but often overlooked, component to the process when an organization attempts to implement change is tracking the progress of that change. This oversight is not limited just to the actual change process but extends to the literature on change as well. It is not uncommon for entire chapters to be devoted to other areas of change management, but only a few lines are offered on tracking. This lack of information on tracking or badly executed tracking can contribute to a change initiative that fails to deliver on its goals.
When a company is about to implement change, it generally follows a pattern. The overall justification for change has been made. A plan has been developed, either in-house or with the assistance of external consultants that specialize in change. It is likely that lists of action items have been created. The long term goals have been discussed and agreement reached. Then the plan is set into motion.
Once the plan is moving forward, tracking can be divided into two general levels: lower level tracking and upper level tracking. An easy way to think of this is to consider approaches to tracking in terms of academic years such as freshman, sophomore and so on.
At the very bottom of the tracking methods is a freshman approach to the problem. This method of tracking is to not track progress at all and hope for the best. In this instance, far too much is being left in the hands of chance.
At the next level up, a sophomore approach is to set up a conference call with the major players involved with the attempt to implement change. On the call, the major goals of the change project will be reviewed and survey is done to see if everyone is still on board with the goals. If so, the project moves forward as before, with no real oversight of its progress. This type of tracking is only marginally better than no tracking because it overlooks any real discussion of progress.
Part 2 of the article will discuss upper level methods of tracking the progress while an organization attempts to implement change.
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