1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits

APMG Change Management Foundation Exam

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1 Chapter 1: The v3 Foundation Exam and the Organisational Context

1.1 Exam Structure, the Five Syllabus Areas and the Certification Path 1.2 Scene Setting: External and Internal Factors Shaping Change 1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits

2 Chapter 2: Understanding the Change Context

2.1 Kelman's Three Levels of Adoption 2.2 VUCA and the Cynefin Framework 2.3 Planned Change versus Emergent Change 2.4 Systems Thinking in Change 2.5 Organisational Culture and Its Three Levels

3 Chapter 3: Diagnosing and Structuring the Change Approach

3.1 Lewin's Force Field Analysis 3.2 Co-Design 3.3 The ADKAR Model 3.4 Evolving the n-Step Process and Kotter's Eight Accelerators

4 Chapter 4: Delivery Strategy, Agile Practices and the Change Strategy

4.1 Delivery Strategy: Big Bang, Phased, Voluntary and Iterative 4.2 Agile Practices and Agile Change Practices 4.3 The Continuous Change Management Cycle 4.4 The Change Strategy

5 Chapter 5: People and Change — Individual Difference and Response

5.1 Differences in People and Personality Preferences 5.2 Neuroscience and Change: SCARF, Mindset and Insight 5.3 The Change Curve 5.4 Bridges' Transition Model

6 Chapter 6: Motivation, Resilience and Learning

6.1 Rewards, Punishment and Pink's Three Motivators 6.2 Positive Psychology, Resilience and Appreciative Inquiry 6.3 The Beckhard-Harris Change Formula and Schein's Two Anxieties 6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip 6.5 Learning Preferences: Kolb, Honey and Mumford

7 Chapter 7: Key Roles in Change Leadership

7.1 Key Roles in the Change Process 7.2 The Role of the Change Sponsor 7.3 The Change Agent's Role and Personal Influence 7.4 The Role of Local Leadership in Change

8 Chapter 8: Psychological Safety, Leadership and Culture

8.1 Psychological Climate and Psychological Safety 8.2 Carolyn Taylor: How Leadership Shapes Culture 8.3 Leadership Styles and Organisational Climate

9 Chapter 9: Teams and Change

9.1 Team Structures and Change Agent Networks 9.2 Tuckman's Stages of Team Development 9.3 Lencioni: Assessing and Growing Team Effectiveness 9.4 Harvesting the Value of Team Diversity

10 Chapter 10: Stakeholder Identification, Analysis and Engagement

10.1 Stakeholder Definition and Identification 10.2 Stakeholder Analysis, Segmentation and Empathy Mapping 10.3 Stakeholder Mapping and Sources of Power 10.4 Barriers to Engagement 10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement

11 Chapter 11: Communication Theory, Messaging and Emotional Connection

11.1 Communication Theory and the Communication Process 11.2 Barriers to Communication and Cognitive Biases 11.3 Messaging: Setting Context and the Tell, Sell, Include Approach 11.4 Appealing to Hearts and Minds

12 Chapter 12: Communication Channels and Planning

12.1 Ways of Communicating and VARK Language Style Preferences 12.2 Communication Channels: One-Way, Two-Way, Lean and Rich 12.3 Communications Planning

13 Chapter 13: Assessing Change Impact and Severity

13.1 Change Management as Risk Management and the Two-Step Assessment 13.2 Step 1: Categorising Impacts and Identifying Impact Areas 13.3 Step 1 Continued: Gap Analysis, Impact Profiles and Monitoring 13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity

14 Chapter 14: Resistance to Change

14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors 14.2 Common Reasons for Resistance and How to Deal With Them 14.3 Building a Strategy to Manage Resistance

15 Chapter 15: Change Analytics and Exam Readiness

15.1 Measurement Types and the Change Delivery Scorecard 15.2 Building a Change Analytics Strategy 15.3 Exam Technique and Final Revision

1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

A benefit is the measurable improvement from change, perceived as positive by one or more stakeholders, contributing to organisational objectives

A dis-benefit is the measurable result of a change perceived as negative by one or more stakeholders, detracting from organisational objectives

The change manager is rarely accountable for benefits — accountability sits with business leadership

Co-design delivers outputs that lead to outcomes that ultimately deliver benefits

• Understanding intended benefits helps structure the change approach and gain stakeholder buy-in
• Last updated: September 2026

The reason we need change is to achieve some kind of improvement. CM3 makes that link explicit at the very start of the syllabus, and the exam tests the definitions word by word — so learn them precisely rather than approximately.

The two definitions

Benefit: "the measurable improvement from change, which is perceived as positive by one or more stakeholders, and which contributes to organizational (including strategic) objectives" .

Dis-benefit: "the measurable result of a change, perceived as negative by one or more stakeholders, and which detracts from one or more organizational objectives" .

Three features of these definitions repay attention:

Measurable. Both benefits and dis-benefits must be measurable. "Improved morale" is not a benefit until you can say how it will be evidenced. This is why benefits work and change analytics are connected.

Perceived by one or more stakeholders. Perception is part of the definition. The same outcome can be a benefit to one group and a dis-benefit to another. A new automated approval process is a benefit to the finance director and a dis-benefit to the team of approvers whose role shrinks.

Contributes to or detracts from organisational objectives. A change that produces measurable improvements nobody in the strategy cares about has not delivered a benefit in this sense.

A dis-benefit is not a risk and not a cost. A risk might happen; a dis-benefit is a consequence you expect. A cost is what you spend to make the change; a dis-benefit is a negative result of the change having happened. Exam questions sometimes offer all three as options.

The outputs, outcomes, benefits chain

CM3 presents a simple chain, and co-design is the process that starts it:

• Stage What it is Example in a paperless-office change
• Output The thing the project delivers Document management system installed and staff trained
• Outcome The new state of working that results Staff routinely file and retrieve documents digitally

Benefit The measurable improvement that follows Print and storage costs reduced by 40%; retrieval time cut from 10 minutes to 30 seconds

The critical insight is the gap between output and outcome. Projects deliver outputs. Change management delivers outcomes. Installing a system is a project deliverable; people actually using it in preference to the old way is a change management deliverable. Benefits only arrive if the outcome does, which is precisely why organisations that fund only the project half routinely fail to realise the business case.

Who is accountable

This is a favourite exam point. The change manager is rarely ultimately accountable for the benefits — that accountability lies with business leadership. The change manager works with business leaders to help realise the benefits.

That does not make benefits someone else's problem. A good understanding of the intended benefits gives the change manager four practical advantages:

It helps structure the change approach , because you know what the change is ultimately for and can prioritise accordingly

It allows better cooperation with business leaders , who care about benefits and often care very little about change methodology

It supports cooperation with project or programme leaders , whose outputs you depend on

It helps gain the buy-in of all stakeholders , because "here is what this is for" is a far stronger message than "here is what we are installing"

Working with dis-benefits honestly

Most change communication fails at the dis-benefit. Change teams announce benefits enthusiastically and stay silent about the group whose job gets smaller, whose team gets split, or whose specialist skill becomes redundant. Those people know anyway, and the silence tells them their loss is not acknowledged.

The practical discipline is to identify dis-benefits by stakeholder group during impact assessment, state them plainly in communication, and pair each with what is being done about it. This is not weakness — it is the foundation of the credibility you will need when you ask the same people to change how they work. It also connects directly to the change curve, where refusing to minimise the losses people experience is explicit guidance.

Benefits and the change manager's daily work

In practice, benefits thinking shows up in three routine decisions. When prioritising, you ask which change activities most directly protect the benefit. When negotiating scope with a project manager, you ask which output the benefit actually depends on. And when a sponsor asks why the change budget cannot be cut, you answer in benefits language rather than activity language — "cutting the change budget puts £2m of the £3m benefit case at risk" lands where "we would have to reduce our engagement plan" does not.