Risk Management - Preventing Reversion: The Reversion Risk
Sudden Results
When a phase change project is implemented in a business, the results are sudden.
This creates a perception risk, as typically there is a perception in change projects that there will be a series of small, incremental changes.
- Employees, stakeholders, and decision-makers are often unaware that the results of the rapid change project will be achieved very quickly.
- There are often multiple improvement projects concurrently underway across the business
These factors create lag and noise in peoples correlation of the gains to the the changes made.
It appears that the change project did not cause the results, consequently, the commitment to the project and related gains is low.
Watching the Wrong Metric
Often, businesses can lose sight of what they started the change project to achieve, and to complicate assessment the metric that is being directly impacted is not clear i.e. which metric(s) the project would improve the performance of.
When there is not a clear measure of the project or Return on Investment (ROI) from the project:
- The employees and stakeholders are not watching the performance of the correct metric and may be watching inappropriate proxy metrics.
- Once people adjust to the new reality, they forget what ‘before’ was like, the new reality seems normal and it appears they have gained no benefits from the change.
For example, often, businesses gain increased visibility as a result of implementing a phase change project. This increased visibility can enable the business to make staff changes or process improvements that they were previously unable to make. As a result:
- The benefits of the change get misattributed to the staff changes or process improvements and not the enabling change.
