Evaluating the maturity of the change management practice across the UN system

The maturity of change management in an organization refers to the organization's ability to implement, manage and sustain change effectively, while minimizing disruptions and maximizing benefits. It also reflects the integration of change management into the organization’s culture, processes, and systems. Change management maturity is assessed through an array of indicators, such as the consistency of use of foundational elements of change management, as explored in the previous section. Awareness of the importance of change management and change agility are other measures that help evaluate change maturity.

According to most survey participants, their organization’s change agility is low or moderate, and their senior leaders’ and middle managers’ awareness of the importance of change is vastly insufficient.

Considering the lack of systematic integration of change management into large-scale internal UN transformations, it may be no surprise that change management leads rate their organization’s change management maturity as low or moderate. They identify strategic shortcomings and a lack of organizational buy-in as the most prevalent barriers.

These findings triangulate results from the foundational elements of change obtained in the previous section and on the lack of consistency and support for change agent networks described in the section on structures of change management. They are also in line with the challenges shared by participants in open-ended questions. This indicates a need to amplify the UN’s change management capabilities.  

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What is the level of change management maturity?

In addition to rating the use of foundational elements of change management, survey participants who self-identified as leads for the Central Change Management Function of their organization or as leads of a change unit or department, were also asked to rate the level of change maturity of their organization. 

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Among the 20 respondents who assessed the maturity of their organization’s change management practice, the 11 respondents from UN entities with more than 5,000 personnel rate the change maturity of their organization higher than the 10 respondents from UN entities with less than 5,000 personnel. Respondents from smaller UN entities rate their organizations from levels one to three, with one being the least mature, and larger entities rate their organizations from levels two to four. None give it the highest rating of five, “organizational competency” and only one (5 per cent), from a smaller UN entity, gives it the lowest rating of one, “ad hoc or absent”. 

Half of change management leads are certified, and they rank the level of change management maturity of their organization higher than their uncertified colleagues: nine certified respondents rank it at level three or four, while only four uncertified respondents do. 

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What are barriers to achieving greater change management maturity?

Following these ratings, change management leads were also asked to select which industry-recognized barriers hinder change management maturity in their organizations. Across all 20 respondents who answered this question, the most prevalent barriers are strategic shortcomings (vision, plan, defined roles and responsibilities) and lack of organizational buy-in (not empowering staff, not listening to feedback, lack of recognition). Both of these responses were selected by 13 respondents (65 per cent). The next most common responses are lack of understanding, identified by 12 respondents (60 per cent), lack of leadership support and prioritization by 11 respondents (55 per cent) and complexity of change and change-resistant culture by 10 respondents each or 50 per cent. 

While respondents from larger and smaller entities almost equally agree that strategic shortcomings, change-resistant culture and lack of leadership support and prioritization are important barriers to change management maturity, they hold very different views about other barriers. For instance, complexity of change and resources are the most significant barrier for smaller entities, but the least significant according to respondents from larger entities. 

Moreover, certified and uncertified change management leads equally agree on the top barriers to change maturity being strategic shortcomings and lack of organizational buy-in but uncertified practitioners (60 per cent) rank complexity of change much higher than their certified colleagues (36 per cent).   

How does a certification impact the perception of barriers?
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Level of awareness of the importance of change management

Lack of awareness of the importance of change management is one of the recognized barriers to change maturity and is deemed a greater obstacle by change management leads in large UN organizations (50 per cent) than in smaller ones (22 per cent). In a separate question posed to all survey participants, only 20 per cent rate the level of awareness of the importance of change management of senior leaders as high. While certification status is not a factor, size of organization is. Senior leaders from smaller UN entities are almost three times more likely to be rated as highly aware than their counterparts in larger organizations, 29 per cent vs 10 per cent.

Furthermore, according to the survey results, the level of awareness among people managers was rated as high by only 5 per cent of participants. This suggests that this crucial group is frequently overlooked in change management interventions. It is worth noting that 8 per cent of respondents from larger UN entities rated the awareness among people managers as high, while only 3 per cent of those from smaller entities did so.

In line with the UN 2.0 vision regarding internal change, our findings clearly indicate the need for change management practitioners to increase awareness among these two key stakeholder groups of the importance of change management.

 

What is the estimated level of change agility?
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Through the Quintet of Change, UN 2.0’s intention is to “create a forward-thinking culture that values agility, learning and curiosity”. Organizational change agility, or the ability and means to adapt to change, is a sign of change management maturity. Agility in this sense is defined by the ability of an organization to rapidly anticipate and respond to change in flexible and effective ways. Low organizational change agility is reflected by rigid, top-down processes with poor stakeholder engagement and no adaptation. Moderate is characterized by structured processes with some engagement, and inconsistent use of agile practices. High organizational change agility is characterized by flexible processes with full engagement, effective use of agile practices, and continuous learning. Click here for a more detailed definition. 

The concept of change agility is trending in the discourse of senior leaders across the private and public sectors, including in the UN. Survey findings from the State of Change Management in the UN System indicate that 90 per cent of survey respondents believe their organization is low or moderately change agile. While organization size makes little difference in the results, certification status does. Twice as many uncertified respondents rate their organization as low (31) than certified counterparts (12).

Only 7 per cent of overall respondents rate their organization as highly agile; this proportion increases to 9 per cent in smaller UN entities and decreases to 5 per cent in larger ones but exhibits no significant difference by certification status.

Greater and more consistent integration of the practice of change management is needed to achieve the stated goal of UN 2.0 of creating a forward-thinking culture that values agility, learning and curiosity.