Costs
Part of Change management after go-live: a skeptical guide
Answering the change management questions in plain terms
Change management questions worth asking before you agree to run one, the ones the floor will ask you, and the answers that mean the plan is not ready.
Being handed a change to run is not the same as being asked whether it should happen. By the time it reaches you the decision is usually made, and the useful contribution is not agreement or resistance. It is a set of questions whose answers determine whether the thing can be executed at all.
The questions below split into three sets: what to ask before accepting, what you will be asked and must answer, and the answers that should stop you.
What to take away
- Ask what problem this change is the answer to, and insist on a specific one. A change with no named problem cannot be evaluated afterward, and will be judged on how people felt about it.
- The question you most need answered before starting is who pays for the transition in hours. It is almost never in the plan and it always exists.
- Any question you cannot answer will be asked on day one by someone standing in front of you. Better to find them now.
Before you accept the change
What specifically is wrong today, and how do we know?
Questions Before You Accept
- What is wrong today, with evidence?
- Who loses time, autonomy, or status?
- How long is transition, whose hours?
- Disposition for work already in flight?
- What trigger makes us stop or reverse?
- Who decides the change is finished?
An answer that describes a desired future state is not an answer. You are looking for a present problem with evidence behind it: a count, a case, a complaint. Without it there is no way to tell later whether the change worked.
Who loses something?
Every change takes something from someone: time, autonomy, a familiar route, a piece of status. Naming them is not a moral exercise. It tells you where the friction will come from and who needs to hear about it first.
What is the transition period and who pays for it in hours?
There is always a period where both the old and new ways are half true and everything takes longer. Ask how long, and whose hours cover it. If the answer is that there is no transition period, the plan has not been thought through.
What happens to work already in flight on the day of the switch?
This is the question that separates a plan from a diagram. Items part way through the old process need a defined disposition, and inventing one during the switch week is how work gets lost.
What would make us stop or reverse this?
Ask for it in advance and in specific terms. A trigger written before you start is a decision; the same trigger discussed afterward is an argument about whether things are bad enough yet.
Who decides that it is finished?
Changes without an end state stay in a permanent transitional condition, where the old way is discouraged and the new way is not yet required, which is the worst of both.
What the floor will ask you
These arrive within a day of the announcement. Prepare all six in writing before you announce anything.
Six Questions From the Floor
- What do I do differently Monday morning?
- What happens to the thing I am mid-way through?
- Who do I ask when it fails, and when?
- Is this measured, and measured on me?
- What if I get it wrong the first week?
- Is the old way still available, until when?
Use these as scripts only after filling every bracket with a confirmed decision. Do not announce a placeholder as if it were a commitment.
- What is changing, and when does it start?“On [date], [specific task, approval, or tool] changes. Until then, continue to use [current route].”
- Why are we changing it?“We are addressing [specific problem], supported by [baseline evidence].”
- What happens to work already in progress?“Work started before [switch date] will [finish under the old process or transfer through a named handoff]. [Owner] will track exceptions.”
- What should I do if the new process does not work?“Report [defined issue] through [reporting route]. [Decision-maker] will compare it with [stop or reversal trigger] and decide whether to continue, correct, or reverse the change.”
- How will my performance be measured while I learn?“Through [date], [metric or target] will be handled this way: [rule]. [Specified learning effects] [will or will not] count toward individual results.”
- When does the old process end?“The old route ends on [date]. From [date], use [new route]; [exception process] handles work that cannot move.”
Two of these deserve real thought rather than a formula. The performance-measurement question is: “How will my performance be measured while I learn?” The answer must say whether the learning period counts against people and what rule applies; an evasive answer here costs the rest of the change.
The last question is: “When does the old process end?” Give a date. “For now” means people use the old way indefinitely, and running two routes forever costs more than either.
Answers that mean the plan is not ready
“What will happen on day one?” “It will be clear once we start.” Sometimes true of details, never true of the switch day. If nobody can describe day one, day one will be improvised by whoever is on shift.
“Who benefits, and who bears the cost?” “Everyone benefits.” No change is symmetrical. This answer means the costs have not been located, so they will land unannounced on whoever is holding them.
“What method are we using, and what decisions does it cover?” “We are following the standard approach.” A method is not a plan. Prosci’s ADKAR Model and Kotter’s 8-Step Process are named approaches, but neither supplies the specific decisions about work in flight, rollback, and cover.
“How will people learn and practice the new process?” “Training will handle it.” Training handles a skill gap. It does not handle a step that is impossible as designed, a tool that is not ready, or a conflict between the new way and an existing target somebody is measured on.
“How will we know whether the change worked?” “We will measure it afterward.” Afterward is too late to know what it was like before. A single before-reading taken this week is worth more than an elaborate measurement plan starting on the day of the switch.
Asking about a change already underway
Different questions apply once something is running, and the biggest one is whether the difficulty you are seeing is transition or design.
Transition or Design Difficulty
Transition difficulty
- Over time
- Falls
- Shows up as
- Slowness, questions
- Visible at
- Two to three weeks
- What to look for
- Questions fading
Design difficulty
- Over time
- Stays flat or grows
- Shows up as
- Workarounds
- Visible at
- Two to three weeks
- What to look for
- New informal handling
Transition difficulty falls over time, showing up as slowness and questions. Design difficulty stays flat or grows, showing up as workarounds.
The difference is visible about two to three weeks in. Before you look, write down which one you think it is. That keeps you from reading the data into the answer you prefer.
Ask what has appeared that was not predicted: new informal handling, a message channel that sprang up, a spreadsheet somebody built.
Those are the operation telling you what the design missed, and finding them means looking at how the work is now done, not how it was specified. This observation should complement an adoption method, not be replaced by one; see the framework discussion.
What to do with the answers
Write them on one page and circulate it before the change, not after. Half of what is written there will be wrong, and being wrong in writing is what makes it correctable.
Then keep the page. When somebody asks in three months whether the change worked, the named problem and the stated trigger are what let you answer, and without them the answer will be an impression.
Use a baseline and a measure you can revisit. The operations measurement discussion addresses metrics, while the broader change-management discussion covers sequence, communication, and adoption. For practical prompts, see phase-by-phase change checks and the mechanics of a process switch.
For a U.S. workplace-safety change, check applicable obligations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and OSHA standards with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The linked UK Health and Safety Executive document is a UK reference and does not establish U.S. obligations. The slow drift by which a temporary exception becomes normal practice, which is what an unfinished change produces, is described as normalization of deviance.
Common questions
Is asking all this going to look obstructive?
It can, and the framing decides it. Asking what happens to work in flight reads as planning. Asking whether this is really necessary reads as opposition, even where it is the better question. Ask the executable questions first and you buy the standing to ask the other one.
What if the answers simply do not exist?
Then you have found the plan's real state, and you can either supply the answers yourself or say plainly that the change is not executable yet. Both are better than starting and discovering it in week two.
Who should answer the floor's six questions?
The person who will be there on the day, not the person who designed it. An answer delivered by someone who will not be present when it goes wrong is heard as a claim rather than a commitment.
How much of this applies to a very small change?
The day-one question and the work-in-flight question always apply, whatever the size. The rest scales down and some of it drops away. A change that affects three people for a week does not need a stop trigger; it needs somebody to say what happens Monday.
