Defining Change: Goals, Metrics, and Pilot Structure

Claire Monroe

Welcome back to Science of Leading, I'm Claire Monroe with Edwin Carrington. Edwin, last time we talked about sponsorship. Today I want to talk about a failure pattern that's almost invisible while it's happening, everyone agrees on the change in theory, then argues about it in execution.

Edwin Carrington

That's what happens when success was never actually defined, Claire. And it usually hides behind language that sounds like a goal but isn't one. "Improve collaboration." "Increase accountability." "Drive transformation." "Be more agile." Nobody disagrees with those phrases in a meeting, which is exactly the problem, they're impossible to disagree with because they don't mean anything specific yet.

Claire Monroe

So what does a real version of "improve collaboration" actually look like?

Edwin Carrington

Something observable. "Handoffs happen within twenty-four hours." "Status updates happen weekly, in the platform, not in inboxes." "Managers use the same scorecard for performance check-ins." "Training gets applied in role workflows within thirty days." The moment you can picture someone doing it or not doing it, you have an actual goal.

Claire Monroe

And I think the metrics trap is just as sneaky, because it's tempting to just track whether the project shipped on time.

Edwin Carrington

Which tells you almost nothing about whether the change worked. You need two metric sets running side by side. Project metrics, timeline, scope, system stability. And people metrics, adoption, capability, engagement, sustainment. If you only track project metrics, you can finish the rollout and still fail the actual change.

Claire Monroe

Can you break down what belongs in that second set? Because "people metrics" can turn into a vague bucket too if you're not careful.

Edwin Carrington

Four specific things. Adoption, who's actually using the new process and how often. Capability, can they do it correctly, which shows up in error rates and rework. Engagement, do they believe it helps and do they feel supported doing it. And sustainment, does it persist sixty to ninety days after the initial push, because that's where most "successful" rollouts quietly revert.

Claire Monroe

Sustainment feels like the one everyone forgets to check, because by day ninety the project team's already moved on to the next initiative.

Edwin Carrington

Exactly why every one of these metrics needs a named owner. A number with no owner becomes trivia nobody's accountable for.

Claire Monroe

Okay, so once you've defined real goals and real metrics, the next question is how you actually structure the rollout. And this is where I think a lot of leaders either overthink it with some elaborate framework, or underthink it and just launch.

Edwin Carrington

Both extremes fail for the same reason, no structure to catch the predictable problems. Research on this is direct, organizations applying a structured methodology are thirty-three percent more likely to see good or excellent change management effectiveness than those without one. Not because the model is magic, but because a structure forces decisions you'd otherwise avoid, sequencing, how deep to engage stakeholders, reinforcement routines, what gets measured and when.

Claire Monroe

And the model itself should match the type of change, right, not just whichever one a consultant is pitching that year.

Edwin Carrington

Correct. Individual adoption and behavior shift, something like ADKAR logic fits. Organization-wide transformation needing coordination across a lot of stakeholders, Kotter-style sequencing keeps urgency and governance visible. Iterative improvement to a business process, Lean or PDCA thinking keeps the loop tight, test, learn, standardize. Pick based on the shape of the change, not the shape of the slide deck.

Claire Monroe

And then phasing, I think, is where mid-sized companies get impatient. They want to go company-wide immediately.

Edwin Carrington

Which is the classic failure pattern, launching everywhere before you know what breaks. A real pilot has a defined group and timeframe, clear success criteria decided before you start, a weekly feedback cadence at minimum, and a decision gate at the end, scale it, revise it, or stop it. If any of those four pieces is missing, it's not a pilot, it's a soft launch with better branding.

Claire Monroe

And a project management platform helps here too, as long as it doesn't become its own second job.

Edwin Carrington

Right, use it to create visibility, not bureaucracy, track milestones, document who owns what decision, surface blockers early. The moment updating the tool becomes the work, you've lost the plot.

Claire Monroe

If you're trying to figure out who on your team has the behavioral profile to run a pilot well, calm under ambiguity, follows through on routines, OAD's free Top Performer Profile gives you that signal in about seven minutes, results in twenty-four hours, no credit card. That's O-A-D dot A-I.

Edwin Carrington

Define the destination in specifics, then structure the path there. Everything else is just motion.

Claire Monroe

Perfect place to leave it. Thanks, Edwin.

Edwin Carrington

Always, Claire.