Best Practices in Change Management - Measurement

We don't get much argument on the importance of managing the "people side" of projects. But demonstrating the value that change management brings to the table through metrics is sometimes overlooked. One of the ways I have found to get some early traction on measuring change effectiveness is to ask sponsors - "what is your evidence of success?" It is important to ask this in the early stages of designing your approach as this will help shape your plan. For me, the OCM goals are always:

• ADOPTION - What level of buy-in are we seeing from stakeholders?
• PROFICIENCY - How well are stakeholders performing in the "new world?"
• UTILIZATION - Are stakeholders using the new tools, processes, methods vs. reverting to old ways?

When I share these goals with sponsors & leaders - we end up having a pretty robust dialog that ultimately drives us to relevant effectiveness measures for the project. Although, I must admit - having this discussion is kinda like dentistry sometimes :)