Jumpstarting Your Organizational Change

Studies have shown that approximately 70% of organizational change efforts fail. This is no exception for the capital projects industry. To remain successful in a changing environment, an owner or contractor capital project organization must be able to adapt to change by reconfiguring its structure, people and culture, and processes and technology.

CII commissioned Research Team 381 (RT-381), Adapting through Organizational Agility, to enable capital project organizations to properly plan for and prioritize the critical change practices required to support the successful execution of organizational change. During its research, RT-381 conducted 11 case studies with capital project organizations to learn about past and ongoing organizational changes. The team’s analysis of these case studies enabled it to identify 60 change practices, which it further investigated in a survey that it distributed to professionals in the capital projects industry. The researchers collected a total of 61 complete responses and extracted the following findings for each type of organizational change investigated during this study:

• Critical change practices for the success of an organizational change
• Fundamental change practices for the success of an organizational change
• Change drivers
• Success metrics
• Examples of change practices
   

RT-381 investigated three general types of organizational change:

• Adapting to transformative change
• Adapting to change with a high degree of agility
• Adapting to transformative change with a high degree of agility
   

The team also addressed five specific types of organizational change:

• Adapting to a new execution model
• Adapting to digitization
• Adapting to the expansion into new markets
• Adapting to acquisition
• Adapting to low carbon initiatives
   

Based on this research, RT-381 created an Organizational Change Adaptability Tool (OCAT) to support organizational change initiators, implementers, and managers as they assess and contextualize changes in the external environment and prioritize where to expend effort as their organizations adapt. OCAT allows owner and contractor capital project organizations to jump-start the change planning process more effectively.