Blast Radius Analysis

About the Blast Radius Analysis

The Blast Radius Analysis is used for the early identification and analysis of key stakeholders. Its results will feed into the Stakeholder Assessment section of the Change Implementation Plan (CIP).  It is completed during the Compose phase of the X4MIS Methodology.

For some parts of an organisation, the change (or impact of change) may be small or have little impact on work, while for others, it may change the dynamic of the way they work. The blast radius helps to analyse the groups affected, how they are affected and their involvement in the change and how they will react to the change.

Why you need to complete a Blast Radius Analysis

The Blast Radius Analysis allows you to position yourself as an outsider looking into the company to understand affected groups and whether they’re indirectly or directly impacted. It enables the identification of the early adopters, influencers who play a pivotal role in spreading awareness about the change that is to come.

It allows the identification of resistors. Some groups will resist change as it may impact their work or change what they are used to. Resistance to change is normal human behaviour; almost everyone will have some form of resistance. The Blast Radius seeks to identify highly impacted people who are likely to be most resistant.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you should understand the scope of change, objectives, and benefits, have a Change Team in place and other key activities initiating and understanding the change. You will need leads from all the areas/departments impacted by the change for brainstorming workshops.

Steps to complete a Blast Radius

Organise a Blast Radius workshop with the Change Team and leads from all the obvious areas/departments impacted by the change. The workshop should encourage participants to challenge the process and results. Managed confrontation present in this beginning stage will facilitate the identification of resistance to change, and a brainstorming workshop is a perfect process.

Start the workshop with a review of the proposed change

The first part of this process is Divergence – allowing participants to contribute and provide feedback on the proposal.

Questions to initiate conversations with the workshop team include:

1. What is the change?
2. Is it feasible?
3. How long will it take to implement?
4. Why is change necessary?
5. How does it affect the company and its staff?

The second part is Convergence – focusing everyone together to more unanimously categorise the stakeholders, those who will become influencers of change and those who will challenge it.  One of the aims is to promote the change and diffuse resistance from within individuals in the workshop.

Identify directly impacted stakeholders - Start by first identifying those directly affected. This includes the Project Team, end users and suppliers. In addition to the internal business users, these may consist of:

• Suppliers who provide inputs or information required to complete the impacted work.
• Customers that use the outputs of the impacted work.
• Human Resources and Audit functions who monitor, check, approve, and/or authorise the impacted users and their work.

Identify the influencers - These are stakeholder groups that will react positively to change. For example, the Project Team are influencers who will support and promote the change around them.

Identify resistors - Identify those who may challenge or even directly oppose the change. These tend to be suppliers and end users.

Identify the observers - The last step is identifying the observers/interested parties. These may include interested stakeholders who consider the change's outcome critical to the organisation's overall success or their respective teams. They are other business units that may wish to be kept informed. These can be marketing units or external stakeholders contracted to the company.

The Blast Radius Analysis Template

There are a range of Blast Radius Analysis templates available on-line.  The X4MIS Blast Radius Analysis template is in PowerPoint format with the data captured in workshops displayed in a diagram, enabling readers to easily consume the outcome of the analysis.  It also makes the analysis results to be inserted as a diagram into the Stakeholder Analysis section of the CIP.