Case study: Federal government
Driving federal IT transformation with a change readiness assessment
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Government employees report high technology adoption, low enablement
A federal regulatory agency used multiple workflow systems for application reviews. Leaders recognized the need to adopt one system to centralize data, streamline workflow distribution, and support collaboration and interdisciplinary reviews. A single system would not only improve the efficiency of individual application reviews but also transform the entire review process.
After selecting and piloting a new workflow system, results were mixed and employees were dissatisfied. With a significant investment at stake, it was essential to understand the adoption challenges—and how to successfully execute changes for a smooth system adoption. Confident in Eagle Hill’s change management expertise, the agency selected us to conduct a change readiness assessment that evaluates IT change readiness across the organization. We saw a need to go even further. By developing a change maturity model based on the assessment data, we created the foundation for a broader, long-term tech change strategy.
Goal
Provide the agency with insight into its IT change readiness to more effectively facilitate adoption of a new application workflow system and inform future tech change readiness initiatives.
Unconventional consulting—and breakthrough results
survey response rate and 93 stakeholder interviews conducted
recommendations to improve change readiness based on assessment data
areas of improvement identified to inform an enterprise change strategy
The challenge: Lacking clarity into IT change readiness
With more than 5,000 employees depending on the workflow system to complete the agency’s most mission-critical work, adoption challenges had real mission consequences. While decision-makers recognized the problem, they lacked the data insight to understand their IT change readiness and the full scope, prove their assumptions, pinpoint the nuances of different stakeholder experiences, or identify root causes. This lack of insight was a significant blocker, especially for an organization that values data and prioritizes it as a foundation for making regulatory decisions.
The roadmap to success: Change readiness assessment & the human side of technology change
We grounded our change readiness assessment in a key principle of successful technology change management: address the human issues, not solely the technical ones. Solving for the human aspects of change is not about understanding the organizational chart—it involves assessing change in the context of organizational culture, which naturally influences how people respond.
Making this human focus our touchstone, we designed an evaluation process that included analysis of the data we collected across five “gold standard” levers of successful change management:
- Leadership and sponsorship
- Stakeholder engagement
- Communication
- Learning and development
- Measurement and agility
Our change management consultants worked closely with agency stakeholders from start to finish, completing the IT change readiness assessment in a compressed timeline. Key milestones included:
Identifying targeted stakeholders. Developing an accurate change readiness assessment hinged on connecting with the right stakeholders. To identify them, we documented nearly 300 roles across the agency, creating a stakeholder framework that simplified a complex web of stakeholders for data analysis. It was a “Rosetta Stone” of roles that established a common language for understanding and aligning similar roles across departments.
Administering in-depth surveys and interviews. Once stakeholders were identified, we conducted surveys and interviews to understand employees’ experiences with the workflow system. This data collection process included frontline staff using the system as part of their day-to-day responsibilities as well as members of the IT teams responsible for developing and maintaining the system.
Conducting rigorous data analysis. Drawing on Eagle Hill’s data analytics experience, we conducted qualitative analysis of data from documents, surveys, interviews, and focus groups through the lens of the five levers. Our team aggregated results and documented trends and common themes, which informed insights into the agency’s tech change readiness, barriers to change, and areas of strength.
Developing a comprehensive change maturity model. Our analysis revealed that the agency needed to elevate IT change readiness and change management to execute a change of this scale. To help the agency contextualize our findings into an actionable assessment, we developed a change maturity model. The model detailed infrastructure and processes for the agency to scale in support of future changes. Moreover, the model was key to addressing pain points including inconsistent change capabilities, lack of accountability, unclear roles and responsibilities, and top-down communications gaps.
Delivering a detailed assessment report. We developed a report that incorporated the maturity model, key insights, and recommendations. It included detailed information on findings and our data collection approach to use in future efforts. We designed the report so that it could be separated into component parts based on the audience’s organization and level. This way, leaders were clear on how to implement the recommendations for their departments.
Building future change capacity. While our primary goal was to provide the agency with insights on how to facilitate successful adoption of the new workflow system, we approached it with the future in mind. By providing resources such as our Change Maturity Model, and building the case for change management, we built capacity within the agency for future tech change readiness assessment and implementation efforts.
The path forward: Change readiness assessment for successful technology adoption
The agency’s engagement with Eagle Hill was a turning point for their approach to technology adoption change and IT change readiness. Our change readiness assessment provided them with a clear understanding of stakeholder experiences with the workflow system, a change maturity model, and recommendations for next steps that were customized by department. Decision makers now have a clear path forward on how to successfully approach implementation of the new system to improve individual application reviews and bring efficiency gains to their review process.
