CAQA Digital / Knowing Whether It Worked

Ask the people who do it daily, six months later

The most honest test of a change is a plain question put to the people living with it.

Six months after a change, the goodwill has gone, the novelty has gone, the extra support has gone, and what remains is the arrangement as it will actually be. That is the moment to ask the people who use it every day whether their work is better than it was. Not whether they like the system, and not whether they have adapted, but whether the job is easier, clearer or less frustrating than it used to be. The answer to that question is the only assessment that means very much.

It has to be asked in a way that permits an honest reply. If it is asked by the person who led the project, in a group setting, shortly after a great deal of public effort, the answer will be polite. Asked quietly, individually, by someone with no stake in the verdict, the answers are different and considerably more useful. People will usually be specific if they believe specificity is welcome and will not be argued with.

The last part is the hardest: being willing to hear that it is worse, or that it is better in some respects and worse in others, and to act on that rather than explain it away. A change that has made one group's work harder in order to make another group's easier may still be the right outcome, but only if that trade is known and acknowledged rather than discovered by accident years later. The institutions that ask this question and answer it truthfully are the ones that get better at changing, which matters more than any single change ever does.