Qualitative Data: Information that seeks to describe a topic more than measure it, such as opinions, views and reflections. A qualitative survey is less structured, and it seeks to delve deeply into the assessment topics to gain information about stakeholders and employee’s motivations, thinking, and attitudes.

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Quantitative Data: Cold, hard facts and numbers. Quantitative data is structured and statistical. It provides support when you need to draw general conclusions from your assessment or research.

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Rarely Blame the Employee (RBtE): Employees should rarely be blamed, as we don't know their environment or background. Only the behaviours they are exhibiting should be judged.

Readiness: The process of assessing the change readiness of the organisation and the employees prior to change implementation. This will ensure change can be adopted and the benefits can be realised.

Rebels: One of three employee change standpoints during change implementation. ‘Rebels’ tend to resist change blindly, sometimes this can be a natural reaction even if the change is to their benefit. The default reaction is that change is a bad thing and will put them at a disadvantage.

Reinforce: Reinforcing change is critical to ensure adoption of the new way of working. The sponsor and leaders are expected to intervene when there is resistance, or when the employees are not adopting the new skills and behaviours.

Resistance: The reaction by the organisation, departments or individuals when they perceive that an organisational change coming their way could be a threat to them. Without further awareness and understanding, this resistance will cause fear. It will trigger actions that negatively impact the pace of organisational change implementation, adoption of the new ways of working and benefits delivery.

Resistance Management: The process of addressing stakeholders’ opposition to a change.

Resistance Strategy Plan (RSP): This plan provides specific actions to understand and address resistance. The actions and plan focus on the change implementation strategy and vary depending on if it is a ‘Tell’ or ‘Sell’ change implementation approach. This is a component plan of the PCP and may be needed if the change team foresees high resistance challenges.

Return on Investment (ROI): The benefits that the change delivers. These are dependent on speed of adoption as well as delivering the programme on time, within budget and the specified scope. The ROI can be calculated using the following equation, ROI = (Expected Project Benefits - Project Costs) / Project Costs.

Rework: Correcting a defective, failed, or non-conforming item, service or product prior to customer delivery. Rework includes an organisation’s repeat effort, such as disassembly, repair, replacement, reassembly, etc.

 

Risk: In terms of change programme delivery, the probability of occurrence of a specific event that affects change implementation success. Risks are not negative by definition. In change management, risks should first be considered opportunities to enhance change adoption.

Risk: See ‘Change Risk’.

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Risk Management: Identification, evaluation and prioritisation of risks to eliminate or mitigate their probability or severity or to leverage opportunities during change programme implementation.

Roadmap: A chronological representation of a programme’s intended direction, graphically depicting dependencies between major milestones and decision points, while communicating the linkage between the organisation’s strategy and the programme’s work.

Say: The first key element of sponsorship. ‘Say’ is the foundation and is all about communicating the business case for the change to all affected stakeholders.
 

Seat Warmer Nominee© (SWN©): A person in an organisational role, family business, BoD, government, committee, etc who are either nominated into a an important position but are unconcerned or deluded about the business value or objectives they should be delivering..

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Servant Leadership: A leadership philosophy in which the main goal of the leader is to serve others, focussing on the needs of employees, especially team members, before they consider themselves. Leaders do not accrue power or take control. The characteristics of servant leadership are compulsory to be an effective and proactive leader of change.

 

Silo Focused Leader: The leader of a department and its employees develop more loyalty to a specific group than to the wider organisation. They lose sight of the overarching goal of organisational success and instead focus on departmental goals. For the change to be successful, organisational silos and their must be eradicated quickly and ruthlessly. See Change Leadership Standpoints.

 

SIPOC: Is a process improvement tool used for documenting business processes. SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers which often form the columns of the diagram. The SIPOC diagram visually illustrates a business process from beginning to end at a high level. It is sometimes called COPIS so the process improvement start with the customer first.

 

Skills: Transferable talent, competence, expertise, etc needed by the employee to be able to operate at the new way of working. These will include technical understanding and subject knowledge.

Skills and Behaviours Learning Plan (SBLP): Identifies skills and behaviours that will be required for the employees to adapt to the new way of working. A training needs analysis (TNA) can be used to identify skill and behaviour gaps. This is a component plan of the PCP and may be needed if the change team foresees learning or training as a major activity in terms of effort and time.

Sponsor: The most senior leader within the programme, reporting to the CEO or a steering committee. They are authorised to mandate the programme, the business case and are responsible for change adoption, benefits realisation and successful change programme delivery.

Sponsorship: The sponsorship role is to communicate the programme’s change (‘Say’), provide resources (‘Support’) and ensure the change lasts (‘Sustain’). The process of aligning stakeholders to support and own the change.

Sponsorship and Resource Plan: Identifies the change sponsor and defines the strategy and actions to develop the required programme resources; change lead, communication lead, change agents, etc. This is a component plan of the PCP and may be needed if the change team foresees resourcing their team as a challenge.

Sponsor Assessment: An assessment of the organisation’s sponsorship that can identify strengths or weaknesses with the change implementation.
 

Stakeholder: An individual affected or impacted by a change.

Stakeholder Analysis: The systematic examination and evaluation of stakeholders in order to prioritise, manage and engage with them effectively throughout the change programme.

Stakeholder Engagement: The process in which an organisation involves and engages people who may be affected by the decisions it makes or can influence the implementation of the change.

Stakeholder Engagement Plan: Identifies the actions to engage groups and individuals affected by the change and mitigate resistance by enlisting their support, adoption and ownership. This is a component plan of the PCP and may be needed if the change team foresees stakeholder engagement challenges.

Stakeholder Mapping: This involves representing stakeholders on a grid to display their level of influence on one axis (low to high) and their likely level of cooperation (‘Rebels’, ‘Observers’ and ‘Advocates’) toward the change on the other.

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Standard Operating Procedure (SOP): Are top-level documents that advise employees which actions to take under a variety of circumstances, standard work instructions (SWI) describe those actions in detail. SOPs should be written in a brief manner in simple language and usually only describe the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘when’ (ISO 9001). 

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Standard Work Instructions (SWI): Are lower-level detailed instructions designed to ensure that an organisation's manufacturing and service processes are consistent, timely and repeatable. Leading practice suggests SWI are printed and located near the operator’s work station. They are linked to the top standard operating procedure (SOP) and these documents provide more details on the tasks, they show the 'how' the activities are carried out (ISO 9001).

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Sticky Note Change Brigade: A derogatory name given to change people who totally focus on the fluffy approach to change management. While thought leader acknowledge what is sometimes important, they see them as devoid of change implementation traction, totally failing to challenge organisational leaders who have indifferent delegator or silo focused standpoints on the Leadership of Change®.

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Strategic Delivery Blindness© Syndrome (SDBS©): A team or an individual working on activity that they are incapable of delivering, it is not strategically important and adds no value to the organisation or their shareholders. Because of their like mindedness they are blindly convinced of the opposite, they ignore basic challenge to state their objective, exposure of the approach is rarely acknowledged and quickly forgotten by many. [ACMPUK20210518]

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Strategic Planning: The process undertaken by an organisation to define its overall purpose, priorities to work towards that purpose and how each priority will be addressed.

Strategy: An approach to achieve an organisation’s strategic goals or address strategic issues. A strategy might be a major approach that uses the internal strengths of an organisation to take advantage of external opportunities, while shoring up internal weaknesses to ward off external threats. An organisation’s strategies are usually long-term.

Subject Matter Expert (SME): An individual who exhibits the highest level of expertise in performing a specialised job, task, or skill within the organisation and can be an invaluable resource to the change team.

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Successful Change and Transformation (SCT): Will happen when change professionals get organisational leaders to be effective and proficient leaders of change by executing their three critical leadership responsibilities: Articulate the vision, Model the new way and Intervene to ensure sustainable change. The change profession has to move through the three stages of truth: Ridicule, Opposition and Self-evident (Reference: Arthur Schopenhaue).

Support: The second key element of sponsorship. ‘Support’ builds on ‘Say’ and in this element the sponsor starts to actively and overtly support the change, provide resources and coach the organisation.

 

Sustain: The third key element of sponsorship. It builds on ‘Say’ and ‘Support’. ‘Sustain’ is critical for the organisation to deliver value and achieve its strategic goals.

Sustain Phase: The third phase of the a2B Change Management Framework® (steps nine and ten) which focus on closing the change programme to sustain adoption and ensure benefits realisation.

Sustainability: The ability to maintain the future state ‘B’.

Sustain and Close Plan: The sustain part of the plan provides an approach to sustaining adoption and benefits realisation. The close plan will officially transfer ownership and close off the programme, ensuring administrative activities are completed as per the organisation’s procedures. This is a component plan of the PCP and may be needed if the change team foresees sustaining and closing the change as challenging.

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System: A set of interconnected devices that provide outputs. They execute and control the internal processes and procedures that deliver the organisations products or services. Along with employees and processes they play a significant role in organisations.

System Change: An organisational change that focuses on changing its internal systems which manage and control the internal processes and procedures that deliver its products or services.

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System Operating Manual (SOM): Is the documentation by which an organisation provides guidance on how operators should operate the referenced business system. It documents the approved standard procedures for performing steps correctly and reasonably efficiently to produce goods and provide services.

Tactic: A series of activities, usually short-term and small in scale, intended to achieve a goal or objective.

Threat: A negative risk that could adversely affect the change programme’s objectives.

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Tick Box Change Management© (TBCM©): Training employees or trying to implement organisations change management without a comprehensive focus on programme implementation, leadership alignment, an effective and proactive sponsor/leadership team, employee adoption or in some case a behaviour change.

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TIM H WOOD: See ‘Eight Wastes of Lean’.

To-Be State: See ‘Future State’.

Training Needs Analysis (TNA): The process in which the organisation identifies the training and development needs of its employees so that they can do their job effectively.

Training Plan: A detailed plan for how the organisation, groups and individuals will be trained and coached so they have the new skills and behaviours to perform the new way of working. It will include the training objectives, how and who will develop the content, the selection process of who will be trained, when they will be trained, who will deliver the training, how the trainers will be trained, assessment criteria and coaching plans.

Transfer of Ownership: Prior to closing the change programme, the sponsor and change team should coordinate the controlled transfer of ownership to operations and receive approval to formally close out the programme.

Transformation: Fundamental changes that are significant and considered vital to the future success of the organisation.

Transition State: The state between the current ‘a’ and future ‘B’ state. Transition state is the process of equipping the employees with skills and behaviours to adopt the new way of working so the organisation can achieve benefits realisation.

Triple Constraint: The combination of the three most significant restrictions on any change programme or project; scope, schedule and cost.

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Trusted Advisor: A trusted advisor is a practitioner who influence and help the organisation implement the change. The person will have credibility, reliability, intimacy and low self-orientation

 

Value Add: Describes the economic enhancement a company creates through its products or services before offering them to customers. It is sometimes referred the difference between the price the customer is willing to pay and total costs incurred by the organisation.

Value Statement: Describes the overall, top-level priorities for how an organisation chooses to conduct its activities and to be viewed by the public, for example, integrity, efficiency and reliability.

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Value Stream Map (VSM): A process improvement tool used to visually map and measure the value flow of product or services. It compares the current 'a' and future 'B' state of processes identifying opportunities for the removal of waste and process variation to improve an organisation's process.

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Vision: See ‘Change Vision’.

Vision Statement: A vivid and compelling description of the organisation and its customers at some time in the future. It depicts a long-term, inspirational and strategic vision, which represents the organisation and customers shortly after the strategic plan has been implemented.

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White Lie Coach© (WLC): A coach who will not tell the coachee about their true competence and behaviour in order to be polite or to stop them from being upset so they receive payment for their work. Unfortunately, this approach creates unconscious incompetence, limiting the person and their organisation's performance. In many cases, this creates deluded leaders and the sheep that follow in abundance.

WIIFM (What’s In It For Me): This concept focuses on the likelihood of employee acceptance. The basic premise of this acronym is that when the result of an action is in the best interests of an employee, they are more likely to choose to do it.

Work Stream: A team or group of individuals who complete a common set of activities or tasks as part of a bigger change programme.

Yes People: Employees, both male and female who agree with deluded leaders when they know that this will damage or delay change implementation.

Yes Men: See 'Yes People'