The Success Case Method: Find Out Quickly What's Wrong and What's Not

This method gathers trustworthy and accurate information by asking four key questions. These are: what's really happening? What results are being achieved? What's the value of these results? And, how can it be improved?

The Success Case Method reports its findings in a compelling story format. But don't be fooled into thinking it's fiction: this is a watertight evaluation that'll stand up under boardroom interrogation.

The author, Robert O. Brinkerhoff, is an internationally recognized expert in evaluation and training effectiveness, who's consulted to major companies and organizations around the world. He has fifteen years' experience of using the Success Case Method with companies large and small, including American Express Financial Advisors and The World Bank.

This book will interest and help executives, managers, change leaders, consultants, and training directors in their mission to make new structures, tools or methods a success.

So, keep listening to find out why focusing on success is key, how four questions and six phone chats should provide all the information you need, and what filling buckets has to do with interview technique.

This is an accessible read, organized into eight chapters. The first two explain how the Success Case model works, and its benefits. Chapters three to seven provide a how-to guide to making your own Success Case inquiry, presenting clear and helpful case studies. Chapter eight concludes the book with guidance on how to apply the model in a typical organization. In the appendix, you'll find a complete Success Case report from a study carried out by the author, along with a reference section.

So, let's begin as the book does, by explaining the benefits of this method.

When you're pushing through a change initiative, you'll probably build in formal audits and reviews. But these can be costly, time-consuming and long-winded – and their results usually come very late into the change process. This can leave teething problems and hiccups neglected for longer than they should be.

The Success Case Method is designed to solve these issues. With stakeholders eager for results, and competitors constantly nipping at their heels, change leaders can't afford to wait too long to learn how an initiative's going. So this evaluation process aims to give useful and timely results. What's more, because it's based on listening to people's own stories, it's great for uncovering the more subtle reasons for success – the so-called "soft skills" that many rigorous, statistics-based methods don't and can't measure.

It sounds great, doesn't it, but how does this method actually work?

The Success Case Method involves searching for and identifying the individuals or teams who've been the most and least successful at adopting the change initiative being studied. This is usually done via a survey. Then, the highest achievers are interviewed, so that their success can be examined and documented. It's also useful to understand those at the other end of the scale (who've struggled to make the change work) and then compare the two groups.

Brinkerhoff says all Success Case studies, big and small, follow five steps.

The first step focuses on planning. The second is to create what the author calls an "impact model." This is a description of what the most successful performance should look like for this particular change or initiative, based on the needs and wishes of all the stakeholders.

The third step is designing and conducting a survey to search for the best and worst cases. Step four is about interviewing the people behind the most and least successful cases, and documenting these interviews.

And the fifth and final step is communicating the conclusion of the study. As you heard earlier, this takes the form of a factual story that conveys what's been discovered and what actions are recommended.

Chapters three to seven are dedicated to explaining each of these steps, so readers can understand how to put them into action. We're going to discuss some of them now, starting with the first step, planning.

This is the topic of Chapter Three, and here we learn there are eight areas to consider. These include identifying all stakeholders, and understanding what they need and want to know and achieve. You also need to define the program or initiative you're studying, and identify who should participate. Knowing the budget and other key resources available to you is important, too.

Time frames must also be agreed. For instance, how long into the program or initiative will you start looking for success stories – in other words, when will you start the survey process? When should the study be completed? We'll discuss general rules for timescales later.

In Chapter Four, Brinkerhoff delves into the impact model, the next step in his method. This is a clearly defined forecast of what this particular change or initiative aims to achieve. It answers the question, "If things were working well, what would be happening?" and it's presented in table form.

This table includes the all-important "business case" for the change, identifying its strategy, performance goals and value within the organization. Typical to this method, the table should be concise, consisting of four to five columns at most, and limited to key entries. This chapter talks you through the format in detail, and provides templates and examples.

Once you know the nature and scope of the success you're looking for, you can design the right survey to identify who's achieved the highest and lowest results. In Chapter Five, we learn there are two types of Success Case surveys.

The first is for studies with a single purpose. It only needs to identify those who've achieved the most and the least value from the innovation being studied. This chapter includes a sample survey with only four questions, which can easily be adapted by readers.

The second type of survey asks more about the nature and scope of the success, so it's longer and more complex. Let's say you're a car manufacturer and you want to evaluate the success of a new training program for staff in dozens of car dealerships. You may need 20 questions or more to gather useful information, bearing in mind how many variables there will be across a large number of dealerships.

OK, so now you've got your survey, but when should you send it out? Brinkerhoff recommends the survey take place no later than nine to 12 months after the change has been implemented. If you leave it any longer, people's memories will have faded, and unrelated factors may have complicated the results.

That said, it's important to allow a reasonable amount of time for participants to put the change into action and achieve noticeable results. For example, if a call center brings in a new script, it's fair to expect results straight away. But if a company introduces new sales software, it may be several months before you see any effect.

How many people do you need to survey? Brinkerhoff recommends you aim to receive completed surveys from 40 to 50 participants. Where numbers allow, he suggests sending the survey to 100 people, because in his experience, you can expect a 50 percent response rate.

Remember, these surveys aren't anonymous. The Success Case team needs to track who is saying what, so they can follow up with an interview if they want to.

How many Success Case participants do you need to interview? This is one of the questions covered in Chapter Six which – in Brinkerhoff's words – deals with the heart of the Success Case Method: finding your best success stories and telling them in a credible and motivational way.

Typically, you'll only tell one or two of your success stories, so you really need to find the best. Of course, an analysis of your survey results and any other helpful data, such as sales reports, will point you in the right direction. But interviews flesh out and humanize the success implied by these results.

As in previous chapters, Brinkerhoff draws on his own extensive experience to give lots of helpful advice on practical matters, including budget considerations and timescales.

He warns us that interviewing is the most expensive and labor-intensive part of the study, estimating that each interview may take three hours to arrange, conduct and write up. The good news is, you only need to interview six case candidates.

As with the survey, Brinkerhoff tells us to expect only 50 percent of your interviews to go ahead and prove valid. So six interviews should give you three Success Case studies, which he says is ample.

One useful tip is to keep the number of interviewers to a minimum. The fewer you use, the greater the consistency across the interviews, and the more reliable their results.

Brinkerhoff recommends note-taking over audio recording, which can make interviewees feel self-conscious and ill at ease. He also favors telephone interviews over face-to-face meetings. The results are no different, he says, but a phone chat can be less expensive and easier to schedule, because it can take place anywhere, at any convenient time.

Let's now look at the nitty gritty of these interviews. All Success Case interviews follow the same four-stage process, and should be scheduled to last between 30 and 45 minutes.

Stage one of the interview opens with an explanation of who you are and why you're calling, though the interviewees should already know the basics.

Stage two is about checking they can provide the Success Case story you're looking for. Perhaps the claims they made during the survey weren't quite accurate. If it's not going to be a valuable sample, you should politely end the interview here.

Hopefully, the Success Case will prove valid and you can move on to the third stage – "probing." This is the main part of the interview, when you get all the information you need.

Brinkerhoff suggests we see the interview as a bucket-filling exercise. Each bucket represents an area of information you need to garner from the participant. Typically, a Success Case interview is made up of five bucket questions. These are: what was used in the initiative? What results were achieved? What good did it do? What helped? And finally, do you have any suggestions for making it better?

As much as possible, interview conversations need to feel organic. To help achieve this, Brinkerhoff advises interviewers to spread out pieces of paper representing the buckets to be filled, and then add notes as and when the interview naturally moves onto that bucket's content.

And what about the so-called "non-success" stories, the ones that show how the change didn't work? These conversations need to be handled with care. It's important not to make people feel defensive or resentful. For these interviews, there are only two buckets to fill. What were the barriers that prevented success? And what do you suggest would make it possible to achieve success?

Unlike the success interviews, these non-success interviews tend not to be retold as stories. Instead, the bucket information is used in the list of "barriers to success" cited at the end of the final case study report.

The fourth and final stage is the same for both success and non-success interviews. It's about closing the conversation while leaving the relationship open, in case you need to come back for more information.

Each success interview "story" should be written up immediately into a formal, formatted document called an "impact profile." An impact profile describes the setting and circumstances of the success, how people used the innovation, and the outcomes of their actions. It includes verifiable facts and references. Again, Brinkerhoff talks you through the process and provides plenty of examples to follow.

So now you have your impact profiles, how do you present them? This is the focus of Chapter Seven, titled, "Communicating Credible and Compelling Results That Tell the Story."

Your final report should lead with a Success Case story, communicating how and why that person or team was able to make the change work so well, and inspiring others to strive for their own best performance. You're aiming for an emotional and motivational case study, backed up by irrefutable facts and figures.

So, what's our last word on "The Success Case Method"?

There's no doubt that the benefits of this versatile evaluation method are attractive. Change will always need careful and attentive leadership, and be met with mixed feelings and varying degrees of success. This swift, success-focused approach to assessing what change programs are working – and how and why they're working – will go a long way toward nipping problems in the bud and silencing the naysayers. If leading change is part of your role, we recommend you pick up this book.

"The Success Case Method: Find Out Quickly What's Wrong and What's Not" by Robert O. Brinkerhoff is published by Berrett-Koehler.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.