The Change Equation

Chapter 1 : Introduction

You can download and print this chapter from here

This book shows you how to take two models which describe an organisation's capability - the organisational culture evolution spiral and the business process capability ladder - and combine them to provide a baseline from which you can assessing the complexity and risks of a transformation project – the Change Equation. The ability to analyse and quantify the gap between capability and project complexity is the ‘big idea' of the book. It's simple – when you know how.

When I sat down to write this book I was driven by a sense of deep frustration. The companies and public sector organisations that I had encountered, both as a consultant and as a customer, talked a lot about the changes they were planning in order to improve their performance and transform customer service, but they didn't actually seem to be achieving very much. As I ploughed through the research on project failure and collected sometimes spectacular examples and depressing stories of budgets overspent, deadlines missed and opportunities wasted, my frustration turned to despair.

However in the course of writing the book, my mood has changed. I have had such a positive response to the ideas and methods in the book, from people whose experience and judgement I value and trust, that I now believe you can succeed in shifting organisational cultures and improving organisations' capability to manage change, provided you follow a balanced, integrated approach. I even found a few success stories to tell!

So thanks to everyone who contributed their enthusiasm and optimism. Here's the ‘big idea' we have been talking about.