What Is an Accelerated Change Event (ACE)?

By Kylie Frandsen

At DuraBante, our consultants specialize in transformational change on both small and large scales. One of our proprietary tools for helping organizations successfully implement, navigate, and manage change is an Accelerated Change Event, also known as an ACE.

What exactly is an ACE, though? For many people, when they think of a “change event,” they think about Kaizen methodology. ACEs share and implement many of the same foundations and principles as Kaizen Events. They are multi-day events focused on bringing together the key stakeholders of a process. These stakeholders are then empowered to quickly and effectively create solutions and garner support for positive change without large disruptions to the everyday work. However, there are also a several key differentiators of an ACE.  They are:

• Integration of several methodologies
• Strong commitment of leadership to empower the team
• More significant and immediate return-on-investments
• Team DuraBante’s highly skilled practitioners’ personalized approaches
• Maximization of client’s internal potential talent

DuraBante’s ACE incorporates critical components of a combination of techniques, of which Kaizen is one. The others include the Work-Out process and the principals of Six Sigma. By weaving these techniques together, you optimize the benefits of Kaizen, Change for Good, and Work-Out by breaking down organizational barriers and eliminating defects in the process. Additionally, leadership plays a key role in this process and empowers the team by attending the kickoff and the report-out of the solution. Leadership’s support is critical, and either by approving the changes on the spot or by offering slight modifications, leadership enables the team to immediately continue their work in the most effective manner possible.

ACEs also happen over the course of three days rather than five days because solutions are able to be suggested, refined, and agreed upon more quickly. Then, the solutions agreed upon at the end of the ACE are fully implemented sooner (within 90-120 days), making for a smoother transition. By utilizing industry-leading skills and best practices, our team creates more dynamic events that see responsive results, including immediate return-on-investments (ROIs).

Conservatively, our clients’ return-on-investment has been 3:1 for ACEs. For every dollar expended, our clients typically see one dollar of hard savings and another two dollars of cost avoidance. For some organizations, there’s a clear, direct financial benefit from the improvement of their business processes. One client, for example, saw a reduction of 30% incomplete customer requests after completing two ACEs. Others have seen these benefits in their abilities to reach their organizational goals more effectively. For example, another client organization completed an ACE to analyze performance barriers in their recruitment, training, and retainment practices. Upon completion of an ACE and implementation of the suggested solutions, this organization’s rating went from the bottom third of its kind of the country for recruitment, training, and retainment to being in the top third in less than twelve months.

An ACE also provides much more than a formulaic approach to change, which can quickly become a “cookie-cutter” that misses the particular needs of the client. An ACE begins with a personalized structure that sets up the consultant and client for success through the creation of the “Design Document.” Our highly skilled practitioners use these documents with the client to identify objectives, desired outcomes, scope, schedule, and meeting logistics of the ACE, among other pertinent information. This process is inherently built to create space for not only the specific requests of the client but also the expertise of the consultant. At DuraBante, we deeply believe that the people on our team are what separate our team from other practitioners in our ability to meet and exceed client expectations.

Methodologies and tools like our ACEs are built to support our expert consultants and our clients in creating innovative solutions rather than fitting them into a one-size-fits-all solution space. This is doubly important to us not only because of the effect it has on the efficacy of a change initiative but also because one of the most important parts of our methodology is ensuring that we are creating change with our clients and their stakeholders rather than forcing change onto them. To do this, our consultants focus on maximizing the potential of talent the client has internally to create a synergetic catalyst leading to exponential growth and results.

If your team is looking for powerful problem solving, faster and more effective change, and partners that create change with you instead of force change onto you, reach out at DuraBante.com/Contact.