Study guide
13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity
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
13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity
Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI
Cost types include time, productivity dip, financial, reputational, safety and wellbeing, and opportunity
Organisational factors are the environment, change ability, history of change, individual responses to change, and the nature of change
Stakeholder factors are complexity, coverage, do nothing, and overall
Coverage is the percentage of people in the organisation or stakeholder group impacted by the change, whether perceived or actual
The do-nothing assessment covers the consequences of not acting and reinforces buy-in and burning platform messaging
Last updated: September 2026
Organisations can handle change in many ways. The particular solution chosen and the approach taken depend on the organisation, its culture and level of change maturity . Co-design can help ensure the solution meets stakeholder needs and will be usable, and a range of ideas will emerge from stakeholder groups that the change team must evaluate for viability.
When assessing the impact and severity of each idea, review the cost against the value obtained from implementing the change . This supports good prioritisation and informs the Minimum Viable Change Process .
Sub-step 2.1: Categorising costs
Types of cost, monetary and non-monetary :
- Cost type Definition
- Time The level of effort required to implement, adopt, or reinforce a change
- Productivity dip The fall in job performance for an individual or team before basic competence is achieved
Financial A monetary figure associated with, for example, the use of a resource, lost output, or non-compliance
- Reputational A threat or actual negative opinion on the standing of an organisation
- Safety & Wellbeing An actual or near-miss event that puts an individual at danger
- Opportunity The missed return from the second-best option
Three observations. Time covers implement, adopt and reinforce — the reinforcement phase is a real cost and it is the one most often left out of estimates. Productivity dip is the learning dip given a cost label, which is why timely and effective training provision has a directly measurable value. And opportunity cost is defined precisely as the missed return from the second-best option, not from all alternatives.
Sub-step 2.2: Determining organisational factors
Five factors:
Factor What to assess
The environment External factors, the culture of the organisation, the strategy and vision, and what else is going on that might impact change capacity
The change ability of the organisation Does the organisation have the leadership, structures and frameworks in place to support this specific change ?
The history of change in the organisation How well leaders have managed change previously, and how much cynicism or buy-in to the change is visible
The individual responses to change Each person will be at different stages and will respond in different ways . The environment, change ability and history will all affect an individual's response
The nature of change The scale, purpose and speed of the change. Does the organisation or the impacted stakeholders have previous experience of this size, shape or type of change — evolutionary versus radical, incremental versus big bang?
Note that culture sits inside the environment factor , not as a separate organisational factor of its own. This is a distinction the exam tests.
Note also the causal chain in the fourth factor: the environment, change ability and history of change all affect an individual's response . Individual responses are not independent variables; they are downstream of the other three, which is why organisations with poor change histories see stronger individual reactions to objectively similar changes.
Sub-step 2.3: Determining stakeholder factors
The change team must also consider severity at the stakeholder level . An effective change team will also think about the impacts of not doing the change .
Factor Definition
Complexity An assessment of the impact of the change , the volume of impact areas affected , and the change activity and the unintended consequences
Coverage The percentage of people in the organisation, or a given stakeholder group, that are impacted by the change (perceived or actual)
Do nothing The consequences of not acting and continuing as is . An important consideration when looking at change saturation and prioritisation . It can also reinforce buy-in and messaging on the 'burning platform' where the severity of not acting is high
Overall A combination of the complexity, coverage, and result of not doing anything . Important in showing high-risk stakeholders and change overload if looking at a portfolio of change
Coverage includes perception
The parenthetical (perceived or actual) matters. If a stakeholder group believes it is affected, that belief drives its response regardless of the technical facts. A change that objectively touches 5% of a department but is widely believed to affect everyone has high perceived coverage and will behave accordingly. Correcting the perception is then a real piece of change work.
Do nothing is not filler
The do-nothing assessment is easy to dismiss as rhetorical, and it is genuinely useful for two reasons. It supports honest prioritisation in a saturated portfolio — a change whose do-nothing consequence is mild should give way to one whose consequence is severe. And where the severity of not acting genuinely is high, it supplies the evidence for burning-platform messaging, which in change-formula terms builds A , dissatisfaction with the status quo, and in Schein's terms provides the disconfirmation needed to raise survival anxiety.
Overall as a portfolio instrument
The overall assessment combines complexity, coverage and do-nothing. Its value is explicitly at portfolio level: identifying high-risk stakeholders and change overload across multiple initiatives. A group that appears moderately affected by each of four changes may be severely overloaded in aggregate, and only a portfolio view reveals that. This is the analytical basis for the work-role conflicts and role overload barriers to engagement, and it is what a sponsor needs in order to sequence competing initiatives.