If my view on assessments is that they need to embrace their subjectivity, my view on the scoring of those assessments is that they need to go very much the other way.
One of my first experiences of working as a change manager was at Kingston University. The initiative affected the entire university and included fundamental changes to the structure of every department and faculty.
The initiative had a number of aims including a reduction in the total cost of non-academic run costs. To put it frankly, some people lost their jobs and most of those who didn't were required to start working in very different ways.
The change impact for this change was scored in three simple categories, high, medium and low. Perhaps unsurprisingly the overall impact was assessed as high.
A number of years later I found myself working on the upgrade of an ERP system within a central government department. Nobody's job description was changing, the total number of staff was entirely unchanged and the change amounted to a system upgrade plus attendant process change for a small group of staff.
Just like at Kingston this particular project scored the overall change impact as high, medium and low. The assessment? Overall impact was assessed as high.
How could these very different changes both be assessed as 'high' impact? Well here's one theory about why we score this way...
When you're working on a change initiative the categories of impact tend to get set within the bounds of what's reasonably possibly as a result of that initiative. The scores therefore aren't actually about 'high' or 'low', they're about 'highest' and 'lowest'.
That is to say, the highest impact that an initiative like this can reasonably have. For a sweeping organisational restructure that will be very different than for a limited tech implementation. Yet both might be 'high' within their own bounds.
The problem with that is that 'high' ceases to mean much if it is used in relative terms. I mean, what would we think of a doctor who described both a sprained ankle and brain tumour as 'life changing'? What would we think of a maritime insurer who categorised a yacht and an oil tanker as the same class of shipping? I think we might think they were talking rubbish...
Low impact and high impact - spot the difference
By accepting (often subconsciously) the relativity of change impact scoring from initiative to initiative we deny change management the chance to do something far more powerful.
We deny it the chance to establish consistent, standardised categories for scoring. Just think about that for a moment - any change manager able to compare their own initiative to any other within a global framework.
And I know that some organisations do use frameworks like this and apply them consistently but what I'm talking about is a single for the whole profession. Just imagine being able to instantly compare your impact scores to any other change initiative in the world regardless of which organisation was involved and regardless of the methodology applied.
It would be like the Beaufort Scale for change managers. It would be great.
Regardless of where you are or the type of vessel you're sailing, the Beaufort Scale is a consistent measure of sea state. For sailors everywhere the Beaufort Scale is a way of making sense of the sea.