The Success Case Method

The Success Case Method

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here is what you must at the same time believe is true in order to disbelieve

Anne’s story:

• Anne was lying.

• Her manager was lying.

• Her peer advisors were lying.

• The regional office had falsified its training records.

• Anne had falsified her customers’ files and had defrauded these

same customers.

• The trainer was lying.

• The regional office had falsified its sales and productivity records.

• The national database the company maintained had been corrupted.

• And finally, everyone involved—Anne, her manager, her peers, her

customers, and the training department—had conspired to create

this story and falsify the records that documented it.

So, I noted in closing, if you believe that these things happened, then by all

means you should reject this story, and your claim that this training does not

work is quite true.

The executive took his seat and was quiet and complacent during the rest of

the report session. On the plane returning from the meeting, my colleagues and

I noted how thankful we were that we took the time to follow our own SCM

rules for gathering corroborating and documenting evidence!

The Basic SCM Questions

An SCM study can be used to get answers to any, or all, of four (4)

basic questions:

• What is really happening?

• What results, if any, is the program helping to produce?

• What is the value of the results?

• How could the initiative be improved?

The SC inquiry directed to these questions can range from the very

simple to the more complex. At the simplest end of the spectrum, an

SC inquiry can be used just to discover and illustrate the ways in which

a new innovation is being used or helping determine whether anything

good is happening as the result of a new program or change. More

complex, an SC study can indicate what proportions of people, in what

organizational units, are using new tools and methods, and what suc-

cess they are having. At the even more complex end of the spectrum,

an SC study can provide estimates of return-on-investment and help

make decisions about how much more value a program is realistically

capable of making above and beyond its current level of impact.

Here, in more detail are four basic SC questions and some illustra-

tions to demonstrate the range of inquiry that might be directed

to each:

1. What is really happening? This basic SC question has a range of

applications. At the most fundamental end of the complexity

spectrum, a quick SC study could be used to simply illustrate the

sorts of things that are happening, and not happening, in a new

initiative. In a company that was trying to introduce a new team

approach to selling, for example, we quickly discovered that only

a few of the intended team applications were really being imple-

mented. Almost all sales reps, for instance, were meeting each

week to plan their sales calls in conjunction with one another’s

schedules. But almost none of them were making joint sales calls,

and competition was still relatively rampant, as fears of sharing

commissions overrode desires to cooperate. In another study of

usage of new laptops in a sales firm, we found that all but a few

What Is the Success Case Method and How Does It Work?

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The Success Case Method

applications were being effectively used. Some of the unused

applications turned out to be incompatible with some of the sales

reps equipment; others were tried but deemed to be too complex

or otherwise not helpful.

In a more complex study of usage of simulators for training

computer repair technicians, we found that usage varied dramat-

ically among geographic districts. In some districts, regional man-

agers were providing incentives to attend simulator training and

had created innovative scheduling schemes to allow their staff to

participate. Overall, however, the expensive simulator facility was

under-used or misused by nearly 40% of all technicians. This rep-

resented huge waste, and service management took quick steps to

remedy the situation.

Some of the more specific questions that Success Case studies

can be used to answer are:

• Who is using the new methods, and who is not?

• What parts of new innovations are getting used, and what

parts are not?

• How widespread is usage?

• What groups or subgroups are making the least, or most, use

of new techniques?

• When are methods being used, and with whom?

2. What results, if any, is the program helping to produce? Even very

simple SC studies can quickly gather evidence about the most

poignant and compelling results that a change initiative is pro-

ducing, and they can provide rich illustrations of these “best case”

outcomes. In a recent study of an innovative online supervisory

support system, for example, we found that some supervisors had

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