TABLE OF CONTENTS If you are thinking that this chapter is going to be a standard academic, boring discussion about esoteric data collection and statistics, forget it. When you are collecting information, you are deeply immersed in the politics of the departments and organization. Whatever you say or do may be used against you or misinterpreted for someone s political ends. No matter how you start the change effort with intense management support, things can go badly awry here requiring a massive effort at damage control. Here is a basic lesson learned.
You have to plan and carry out information collection with great care to avoid causing problems and increasing risk to the change effort.
Notice how different the data collection is from the standard methods you learned in school. Figure 7.1 highlights some of the differences. We can elaborate on this table with the following comments.
Interviewing. Interviewing is of little true value in many cases and especially in change management since people often tell you what you want to hear or just reinforce the current work methods.
Direct observation of work. While this is viewed as one of the ways to collect information, in change management it is absolutely critical. You have to grasp the detail in order to define, validate, and implement change.
Focus of contacts. To keep the effort limited, you are often told to interview the key supervisors and employees. These employees are often the king and queen bees. However, as has been stated before, these...
