Monitor Progress

The Executive Sponsor monitors the progress of the Change Project.

Note to Executive Sponsor: Plan on monitoring progress regularly — at least monthly if not more often, depending on the pace of the project.

Monitoring Activities

For our purposes, monitoring means:

• Checking the Change Team’s progress against its project plan
• Make impromptu visits to team meetings
• Read and comment on team minutes
• Meet regularly with the Change leader
• Ensuring the team is still in line with the project goal (and, if not, either adjusting what the team is doing or revisiting the goal)
• Identifying barriers or challenges and helping the team work through them
• Verifying that decisions are being based on data
• Reviewing the team’s planned next steps
• Managing defensiveness
• Reinforce that processes, not people, are the problems the organization is addressing. When a problem arises, ask, “What went wrong in the process?”
• Expose warts and brainstorm how to address them
• Making sure that gains are maintained
• Working to raise the organization’s awareness of the need to improve and progress towards targeted aims
• Mentioning and asking for updates at management team meetings
• Reward and acknowledge staff who have contributed to projects

Limit the Change Project to Six Months

If the team has not made progress within six months (using the definition: one aim + one level of care + one target client population + one facility location), wrap it up anyway. Do not let the project drag on. If you want, help the team perform an analysis to identify what kept them from getting the project done. Was the scope too big? Did they have trouble balancing both project work and their other assigned duties? Did they need more training in improvement (or using data, more specifically)? Finding the source can help you better scope and guide projects in the future. Find the successes at the end of six months, celebrate, and launch a new project.