Conducting a Change Autopsy: Turning Lessons Learned into Adaptability Fuel

It may come as a surprise that, even in the most successful organizations, over 70% of change initiatives fail (Source: PubMed), and the data is mixed on why.

Sometimes companies just move too fast. Their resources and support lag too far behind policy, creating “unfunded mandates,” or there could be an incongruence between different parts of the organization. Perhaps one area or department can’t keep pace with another–a rogue salesperson who makes promises to customers that production can’t deliver, for example.

Other times, insufficient planning and processes are major contributors to project failures. Expectations don’t always match with reality, and there are sometimes blind spots that trip up even the most articulate plan. But in many cases, the biggest threat to a successful change initiative is simply failing to take into account the human element —not taking the necessary steps to understand how the change will affect people, and their individual jobs, on a daily basis.

Most organizations are aware of these risks. In fact, many have experienced the negative outcomes firsthand. But few actually take the time to dive deep into the specific reasons for failure within their organization to figure out exactly what went wrong. Some may be aware of the most common failure risks from a general sense, but every organization is different. Culture, configurations and personalities vary widely, and many have never taken the time to figure out if these common causes are the hangup in their own organization. Or, they might presume to know their organization’s vulnerabilities, but they’ve never really examined their failures objectively in hindsight to see if their assumptions were correct. And so they just keep making the same mistakes over and over.

The devil is in the details.

Uncover the “Why” in a Change Autopsy

While it might seem like a morbid analogy, conducting a change “autopsy” is an excellent way to evaluate change initiatives and improve your organization’s adaptability and change readiness.

Just like a post-mortem autopsy can help identify an individual’s cause of death, contributing factors, provide closure and inform preventative measures, a change autopsy can provide valuable insights for organizations to identify the underlying causes for change initiative failure and prevent it in the future. And just like in the medical examiner’s office, conducting a change autopsy can be grueling work and not for the faint of heart, especially when uncomfortable truths come to light.

But improving your organization’s ability to embrace change requires facing those hard truths and acknowledging where you are now—including honest assessments of your team’s individual Adaptability Quotient (AQ) and organizational AQ.

In fact, regardless of whether your most recent change initiative was a success or failure, conducting a post-mortem assessment is a valuable exercise in continuous improvement. After all, identifying strengths that you want to replicate is just as valuable—if not more so—as identifying weaknesses to improve upon.

By learning from what went wrong and what went right, Adaptability becomes strategic and progressive instead of reactive and static.

Here are 7 steps to conducting a change autopsy to improve your organization’s capacity and ability to embrace change.

1. Revisit change management foundations. The fundamentals of change management (Source: Prosci) have been honed and solidified over decades of implementation, and various models (Source: Sirsol) are readily available. Take time to revisit the basic foundations of change management and make sure you’re adhering to the fundamentals—not glazing over them because you assume they’re understood.
   
   Audit the basics: communication, stakeholder engagement and sponsorship, training, and resistance management. In fact, ask, did you actually follow a structured change methodology? If not, start there as an essential first step. No autopsy is useful if you’re not operating from an auditable process.
   
   
   
2. Compare intended vs. actual outcomes. This actually begins in the planning process. What were the goals of the initiative? Be specific—the goal can’t merely be to “implement the new accounting system,” that’s too vague. The SMART framework is extremely valuable here: goals must be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant/Realistic and Time bound. They should also be incremental—set milestones to measure progress along the way.
   
   With specific goals baked into the plan, you can later compare what actually happened to those stated goals. This can help to surface any gaps in execution or misalignment between strategy and reality. Don’t forget to reflect on your success, too! What exceeded your expectations? Celebrating the wins can drive team motivation and set the tone for continuous improvement.
   
   
   
3. Map the human experience. Unfortunately, this is where so many change initiatives stumble—evidence shows failure to account for the human element and company culture is why 80% of merger and acquisition deals fail.
   
   The reality is that programs and plans that look good on paper can have very different implications in real life. To assess how change is affecting or has affected your team and their day-to-day work, conduct interviews, surveys or listening sessions across all organization levels before, during and after the change process. Ask employees how proposed changes will affect their day-to-day operations before you make them so that they feel heard and understood. Explore how employees experienced the change after it happened. Did it create confusion? Did they feel motivated? Did it generate pushback or cause fatigue?
   
   This is where conducting AQai assessments can help: by getting a baseline understanding of how individuals respond to change, you can then provide some tools and strategies to help them mitigate undesirable responses in the future and better prepare resources to support and mentor them for the next change—even ones that are unexpected.
   
   
   
4. Identify barriers and enablers. This can be tough because it requires unbridled honesty, and identifying internal obstacles can be uncomfortable. In many organizations, the most common barriers are:
   ●  Siloed departments with little cross-functional collaboration and maybe even a bit of territorial or competitive behavior.
   ●  Leadership misalignment, which trickles down through the rest of the team.
   ●  Process rigidity, where you get stuck in “this is the way we’ve always done it” mode.
   ●  Culture, specifically one that is suspicious, skeptical or resistant to change.
   
   On the other hand, change enablers include things like a strong middle management layer, transparent communication, adaptive systems, feedback loops, and psychological safety that fosters experimentation without fear of failure. 
   
   Once you’ve cataloged these barriers and enablers in your organization, categorize them into what’s controllable vs. uncontrollable. The reality is there should be few things in the latter category—most everything is controllable, can be mitigated or worked around. It might just take some creativity, willingness to unlearn and to step outside individual and organizational comfort zones.
   
   This is an area where the AQai Adaptability Assessment is particularly helpful: it provides a neutral language and an unemotional framework for discussing shortfalls that’s objective, nonjudgmental and standardizes the nomenclature used to describe the organization’s qualities and environment, thereby reducing confusion, bruised egos, and misunderstanding.
   
   
   
5. Consider compounding factors. Change rarely happens in a vacuum—there are always compounding factors. When conducting your change autopsy, consider things like: What else was going on that might have had an influence? Were there competing projects that had resources stretched too thin? Was there economic upheaval, uncertainty (when is there not?!) or layoffs that had employees feeling stressed and overworked? Did anything unexpected come up throughout the process?
   
   The truth is, there’s no escaping compounding factors. That’s why being able to adapt on the fly is essential, and not only during planned change: The goal is to learn to expect the unexpected and develop the capacity to absorb such impacts gracefully when they come without derailing the organization or individuals in the process.
   
   
   
6. Translate findings into assets. Gathering evidence in your change autopsy is only valuable if you use it to improve or inform processes as a result. Don’t just document what went wrong or right, but actually use the lessons to embed improvements into how you operate.  You also want to be careful not to turn the process into a witch hunt or scapegoating exercise. You’re not looking to lay blame–you’re looking for ways to improve as you build a nimble and adaptable culture.
   
   Once you’ve completed the assessment, consider building a change toolkit. Codify the lessons learned into actionable playbooks, templates, training, and checklists that can guide future change initiatives. Train leaders in how to navigate change and support employees using real examples from the autopsy. Adapting your processes is how you build adaptability “muscle” – just like weightlifting, by practicing the reps over and over.
   
   
   
7. Close the loop with transparency. Share findings from your autopsy and planned next steps with stakeholders and employees (and don’t leave out the wins). It’s essential to demonstrate that their input mattered and show how it’s being implemented to shape and improve future initiatives. This reduces the stress of change by building up trust and psychological safety—two cornerstones of Adaptability.

Normalize the Autopsy

Just like a real autopsy can be messy and often troubling work, a change autopsy can force organizations to examine some hard truths. But doing so is essential to building your organization’s adaptive capacity. Encourage leaders to make post-change reflection part of the change lifecycle process, not an afterthought. Don’t let the business move on or use “things move too fast” as an excuse to skip this important step.

Adaptability isn’t about just how you react to what’s next; it’s about how well you learn from what just happened.

To learn more about how building Adaptability Intelligence starts with measuring a baseline, contact us to get started with an AQai Adaptability Assessment.