How to make change stick post-delivery

Successful business transformations are tough enough in the project stage, but few leaders plan ways to ensure value continues to be realised, post-delivery. Project One Change Consultant Lucy Parker-Armitage explains where firms need to build to make sure change lasts after the end of a transformation.

We’ve all been there. The programme team down tools. Programme closure communications are issued with the delivery team thanked for the hours and effort they’ve put in. Branded cupcakes are eaten, the ceremonial ribbon is cut, and an awkward launch party is held. Programme members congratulate each other on a job well done and discuss what they’re moving onto next.

Meanwhile, a quick catch up with a customer contact a month or two after go-live paints a very different picture. Is the change still on track or are people looking for workarounds already? Is the story complete and the job really done at this point? Can we walk away certain that the changes delivered will truly stick?

As change professionals, we are often brought on board to support project or programme delivery. By definition, these are transient and time bound endeavours. A programme starts up with the aim to undertake a defined set of activities and deliver beneficial or required change. Once delivery is complete, the programme winds down and eventually closes.

Benefit realisation, however, follows a somewhat different timeline. True value isn’t delivered at go-live – it’s realised through sustained adoption and often long after that programme team has left the organisation. Poor user adoption presents a major revenue drain for customer organisations. Without being reinforced, benefits will fade, and change will fail to stick. This doesn’t mean we need to postpone the launch party or run the programme for longer, but it does call into question whether go-live signifies the beginning or the end of the transformation journey – or somewhere in between these two extremes.

Let’s delve a little deeper into whether true value has been delivered at go-live, or whether maybe it’s the beginning of the next organisational phase. How then, do we embed lasting value post-delivery, and who do we look to in order to drive this activity?

Here we explore some of the Change Management techniques you can put in place to increase the likelihood of sustaining lasting, meaningful change.

Reinforcing new behaviours 

Successful change relies almost entirely on the people in an organisation choosing to stick with the new solutions and ways of working. Without removing the temptation and opportunity for people to revert to old habits and methods, change will likely come unstuck. We ask ourselves whether people are ready to accept and embrace the change in the run-up to delivery, but we need to also consider whether people are willing to maintain the change longer-term.

Reinforcement planning is a programme responsibility during delivery to avoid any organisation from slipping back towards how things were before the programme, and the changes it delivered, took place. Mechanisms to reinforce new behaviours and ways of working should be agreed up front. Roles and responsibilities should be determined for who will enact and monitor these reinforcement activities post-programme delivery. Ultimately, it’s about creating a culture and environment to sustain adoption and deliver business benefits.

Incentives need to remain in place which encourage people to stick with the new ways of working. A support model also needs to continue giving and signposting people towards the help they need in the new setup. Where people exhibit the desired behaviours, this should be recognised and rewarded. For example, benefits can be translated into individual or collective performance metrics, so people derive personal gain from seeing them sustained.

Performance Tracking

This brings us to another key aspect to sustaining benefits – the ability to track and measure performance. This often comes under the banner of benefits management or change readiness during delivery, but needs to transition to the business, with a clear home and owner identified to take responsibility once the programme delivery team disbands.

The benefits selected must continue to be measurable after the programme ends. The right methodologies and tools needed for tracking will depend on the organisation and sector in question, but this isn’t necessarily about having the most sophisticated or advanced technology. While the abundance and richness of business data available to us is ever-increasing, the key here is how we analyse and interpret the data to see whether adoption activities are effective and whether progress is being made against the targets and business outcomes set.

A user adoption plan should be put together during programme delivery. This will include interventions to optimise benefits or address issues once changes have been deployed. Ideally, these will target different audience groups as effective change interventions and activities will vary from one part of the user community to the next. The data collected from performance tracking can be used to focus efforts where adoption is lowest and remedial action is needed the most.

Change capability uplift

We see an increasing focus for our programme change teams to enable and transfer change capabilities within customer organisations as an objective of assignment delivery. We achieve this by understanding current capability and maturity levels, defining the shape of the team we want to create, and building the capability, skills and knowledge to bridge the gap – much the same approach as delivering any change effort in fact.
This uplift establishes an enduring in-house capability to continue embedding change post-programme completion and builds the team and skills to deliver future change management requirements. This puts organisations in a better position to not only deal with the inevitable next wave of change – whatever form it may take – but also to consider continuous improvement and how to turn change into a competitive advantage.

A grounding in Change Management needn’t exclusively target change delivery professionals. Understanding how to support people through change is beneficial throughout the organisation and can help to develop people in many different roles. For example, you could include an overview of the main concepts as a module within training for new line managers.

Change leadership

An extension of building change capability within the customer organisation is the importance of effective and cohesive leadership in making change stick. The ability to lead through change is becoming more and more recognised as part of the essential toolkit for effective leaders across sectors and industries. Change leadership training equips leaders with the skills, mindset and tools to guide their organisation through change with vision, purpose and clarity. It helps people already in leadership positions, or those with the potential to move into them, to understand themselves, their strengths and vulnerabilities, before also considering how these individual aspects combine to create an effective leadership team. 

Just as essential as having an aligned and visible sponsorship during times of change, leaders must continue to champion changes post-delivery by promoting benefits, role-modelling desired behaviours and reinforcing key messages. By showing how the benefits and changes are woven into the organisation’s cultural fabric, people can understand their part in helping to deliver and sustain them.

In conclusion, applying effective Change Management during programme delivery is essential to sustaining adoption and realising lasting value post-delivery. 

Through activities such as reinforcement planning, performance tracking and change capability transfer, organisations leading change initiatives can equip themselves to sustain user adoption and reduce the risk of benefits fading.

Yes, absolutely go ahead with the launch celebrations and mark each major milestone achieved, but don’t neglect to check in with those impacted by change to see how things are faring after go-live.

Let’s not forget that the transformation journey rarely ends when a change programme or initiative completes. A successful change effort is one where benefits are realised and embedded much beyond the lifespan of any transformation programme. True value is measured in the changes that stick.