What is People Change Capacity (PcQ™)?

People Change Capacity (PcQ™) is a measure of how much change an organization’s people can carry at one time before adoption fails or performance and wellbeing decline.

Change programs are usually assessed on the quality of the plan: the scope, the sequencing, the budget, the communications. PcQ™ assesses something the plan cannot tell you, which is whether the organization the plan is being handed to has any capacity left to receive it.

It is measured across four dimensions. Structural PcQ™ asks whether the system around people is pointing the same way the change is. Cognitive PcQ™ asks whether people understand what is being asked and what it means for their own work. Emotional PcQ™ asks whether people believe what they are being told, based on how change was handled the last time. Adaptive PcQ™ asks how much capacity is left after everything already in flight.

The four are not weighted equally against each other and they do not average out. A change can clear three dimensions comfortably and still fail on the fourth. The purpose of measuring is to find out which one is carrying the risk, before the launch date rather than after it.

PcQ™ is measured at the level of a system: an organization, a division, a function, or a change initiative. It is not a personality assessment and it does not produce individual scores.

PcQ™ is read alongside the System Readiness Audit™, which measures whether the systems people depend on can carry more change. Together the two produce the Pulse, a single view of an organization’s capacity. A PcQ™ reading taken on its own is hard to interpret, because it cannot tell you whether a low score reflects the people or the conditions they are working in.

The four dimensions of PcQ™, defined

Structural PcQ™, the Alignment Gap

Structural PcQ™ measures whether an organization’s structures, priorities, decision rights, and incentives point in the same direction as the change it is asking for.

When Structural PcQ™ is low, people are asked to work in a new way while everything around them still rewards the old one. They are not resisting. They are reading the system correctly.

Cognitive PcQ™, the Vision Gap

Cognitive PcQ™ measures whether people understand what the change is, why it is happening, and what it means for the specific work they do on a Tuesday morning.

When Cognitive PcQ™ is low, people can repeat the message back to you accurately and still be unable to act on it, because it was communicated but never translated.

Emotional PcQ™, the Trust Gap

Emotional PcQ™ measures whether people believe what they are being told and trust the people telling them. It is largely set before the current change begins, by how the last one was handled.

When Emotional PcQ™ is low, more communication does not repair it. It usually accelerates the damage, because each additional message is read as further evidence of the gap between what is said and what is done.

Adaptive PcQ™, the Overload Gap

Adaptive PcQ™ measures how much capacity people have left once everything already in flight is accounted for.

When Adaptive PcQ™ is low, the change can be well designed, clearly explained, and genuinely believed in, and it will still fail to land. There is simply nothing left to carry it with. This is the dimension most often misdiagnosed as resistance.

The PcQ™ Maturity Model

The PcQ™ Maturity Model describes how an organization’s relationship with its own change capacity develops. There are five levels.

• Aware. The organization recognises that change capacity is a real constraint rather than an excuse.
• Measured. Capacity is assessed rather than assumed.
• Practising. Capacity data is used to make real decisions about sequencing and load.
• Embedded. Capacity is a standing input to portfolio and planning decisions, not a one off exercise.
• Generative. The organization builds capacity ahead of demand rather than in response to strain.

An organization is placed at the level of its lowest scoring domain rather than its average, on the same principle that governs the System Readiness Audit™. Maturity is set by the weakest part of the system, because that is the part everything else waits for.