Why Capability Maturity Improvement is important for successful Change & Transformation ?
Why CMM? The sad facts
- 70% of Change & Transformation initiatives fail to deliver on their objectives
- 50% of M & A completions fail on integration
- 300% Premium for Agile Organisations
- 500% Discount for Authoritorian Leadership
- Global Productivity is at historically low levels
The Organisation
An organisation is a collection of resources (People, Things, Procedures) viewed as a system and its sub systems, integrated to achieve an overall aim(s). It has inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes with ongoing feedback amongst resources and systems.
What are organisation Capabilities ?
The functioning level of an organisation is determined by the quality of the resources and the effectiveness of their integration and interoperability. This can be described as its Capability, which can be scientifically measured for each sub system, and the organisation as a whole. Capability can be defined as the ability to mobilise resources to achieve specific outcomes.
The value of Capability Maturity Management
Capability Maturity Management is one of the most effective means for Individuals and Teams, to set and achieve change or transformation goals, and continuously improve performance, in line with the organisations aims overall, and for the subsystems of that organisation. It simplifies the management of the sophistication and complexity of modern organisations, because it focuses on patterns of Performance, Behaviours, and Outcomes for all key components of the organisations systems and subsystems, rather than try to manage individual and groups of thousands of different resources and hundreds of resource types.
Why Maturity Levels should be based on standards?
Maturity levels should be normative in that they are based on a standard. Dynamic Systems Maturity Theory is the only normative standard and is based on Psychology & Learning science. It has 15 distinct measurable levels of maturity; however, they are presented as 7 classification levels which are pragmatic and meaningful. Most other Maturity Models use 5 levels which are neither normative nor have a solid scientific basis. They do provide functional value, but it is acknowledged that in dealing with the sophistication of organisation systems, greater precision and granularity is required to guide successful change and improvement initiatives. Review application in OrgCMF™
Symptomatic causes often associated with cause of high failure rates.
Below is a list of items frequently identified in both academic and industry research as the cause of high failure rates, however these are just symptoms of underlying capability issues.
- Lack of shared Vision & realistic plan
- Lack of Talent, Understanding & Skill
- Legacy Systems inertia
- Poor Investment and success measurement
- Lack of Customer focus, understanding and data leverage
- Resistance to Change and poor Change Management
- Inappropriate Culture & insufficient Collaboration
The root causes of high change and transformation failure rates
Research by Dr. Myles Sweeney of the Organisation Development Tools Institute into the high failure rates of change programs over the past several decades (70%) identified Capability Maturity Management related root causes of the high failure rates once you dig below the surface and symptoms that are observable in organisations. These were found to be.
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The Organisation’s change/transformation ambition(s) were beyond its capability maturity level overall (System), or in key Dynamics (Forces on System components). They must be in alignment.
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Building/Improving Capability is a sequential and cumulative process as it’s a learning process. Think of it like academic learning you do home learning and kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, third level, post graduate. You don’t jump levels.
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Specific change actions or initiatives that are beyond the existing capability maturity level (Level of ability and functioning) rarely gain traction and stick and may cause maturity level to regress, while change actions below existing capability maturity level are as a minimum suboptimal with potential also to cause regression.
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When building and improving capabilities if the existing measured capability maturity level for the Organisation, Dynamic or underlying building blocks (Constructs-Characteristics that can be measured) is at the lower levels of maturity they generally lack the foundations for building/improving from the measured level of maturity and the point to start building and improving (starting the sequence referenced in 2 above) is at Maturity level 1 out of 7. Whereas if the measured level of capability maturity is at the higher levels then the development/improvement actions can start using the guidance for that measured level, because for these functioning levels the organisation has the learning capacity to assimilate these actions.
What to look for when selecting an Organisation Capability Maturity Framework?
Any good Organisation Maturity Model should provide a body of knowledge that not only allows measurement or assessment of maturity, but also provides development action guidance for each level from top to bottom as follows:
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