TABLE OF CONTENTS The evaluation activities conducted during the deployment of the strategic change initiative have produced a wealth of data. The challenge now is to separate the wheat from the chaff. Data are analyzed to yield the essential information required to understand the organizational impact of the initiative. Organization leaders then reflect on this information to make decisions about how best to develop their organization. This process of analysis and reflection is accomplished with the following steps:
Separating hard from soft data
Converting benefits to monetary value
Qualifying the monetary benefits
Tabulating the costs of the initiative
Calculating return on investment
Leveraging strategic insights
Each of these steps is discussed in detail in this chapter.
All data are meaningful. Just because data are considered soft subjective and difficult to measure does not mean that they have no place in the evaluation. Strategic change practitioners have mostly relied on soft data to convey the value of their initiatives to clients and business leaders. No leader would say that improved decision making, increased employee loyalty, or more satisfied customers were not important outcomes of change initiatives. Clearly, articulating these benefits is necessary, but not sufficient to understand and increase the value of strategic change initiatives. Leaders today want and deserve more they want to also know the bottom-line impact of the initiative. Providing this knowledge takes us out of soft data and into the realm of hard data.
Understanding the bottom-line impact requires us...
