Onward, Upward
Issue 2-2011
Organizations Don’t Change. Individuals Do:
Are you and your employees change ready?
Research confirms that about 70 – 75% of major organizational change efforts fail to meet expectations of key stakeholders. Considering this negative statistic, CEO’s and business owners have a reason to get passionate about change. Failed change efforts cost a company a lot of money through both the loss of invested resources as well as the lost opportunity of revenues expected upon successful implementation of the change.
Changing people’s behaviour is the central challenge with change – not strategy, not systems, not culture. All of these elements are important but the core problem without question is all about “what people do and the need for significant shifts in what they do”.
Why is this often such an oversight in business? One reason is project leaders often get caught up in focusing on the technical aspects of their solution. They associate technical success with project success. Once the technical changes of the project are complete, leaders are quick to proclaim success only to find a few months down the road that the business objectives of that change project were actually not achieved. The oversight – the people impacted by the change never got on board and engaged in the change. The answer - creating a change ready organization by creating change ready individuals within that organization.
Do you have employee buy-in?
Employees need to buy-in to the change. All change begins with disruption, specifically, disturbing the status quo. It is not that people fear change itself, they fear “not knowing” what might happen because of the change. Mere compliance to the change is not enough. You need everyone’s commitment because only with commitment will you get people to give 100%. With any change fear is often present, so disrupting compassionately is a particularly effective approach. A good place to start is to develop a change “vision”. People want clarity of direction. They want to understand what will happen if things don’t change, and then they want to understand what will happen when things do change. Great visions paint a picture of future possibilities in the minds of its constituents. A clearly articulated vision of the future that is immediately simple, easily understood, clearly desirable, and energizing is the first step in mobilizing individual employees of the organization toward making successful change a reality.
Does your leadership have the ability to shepherd the change?
It doesn’t matter how innovative, inspiring, powerful, and energizing the change initiative is, if you don’t have a leadership team who is capable of mobilizing and managing individual change in the organization your change initiative will likely fail. It is not enough to have capable individual leaders; this is not the same as having “leadership”. Leadership is about having quality leaders throughout the various levels of an organization. Building leadership focuses on the process rather than the individual leader as a person. By doing this, you are building organizational capability that will sustain results over time. For example, when a key leader in the organization leaves, there will be minimal disruption and loss in productivity. Exceptional leadership builds confidence in employees, customers, and investors. Investing in leadership, and a leadership process, will help organizations conquer change, attain goals, achieve strategy, and increase profitability.
Is the culture of the organization historically open to change or risk adverse?
“Culture trumps strategy” and “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Since strategy is always about change, it is clear how critically important the organizational culture is to accomplishing change, and ultimately, the organization’s objectives and strategy. Organizational culture is “what is unique about the way we do things around here”. It is the shared beliefs and assumptions that determine both individual and collective behaviour of the organization. Research confirms how difficult it is to shift, let alone change or transform, culture. One of the most important jobs of leadership is managing and influencing culture. In order to change it, however, leadership must thoroughly understand the culture that created the organization and legitimized it in the first place. By celebrating the culture that came before them, leadership gains an appreciation for past successes so that they can learn and understand the parts of the existing culture that will support the upcoming change and the parts that will impede it. If employees, including leadership, are aware of the beliefs they share, they are less likely to be blinded by them and are apt to understand more rapidly when changing events obsolete certain aspects of culture.
Are employees and the organization already experiencing too much change?
We have all heard the well known statement, “if there is one thing that’s constant, its change”. But sometimes too much change is just that, too much. In many organizations these days, people are reaching what is referred to as “change saturation”. Research completed in 2009 by Prosci confirmed that two thirds of participants indicated that their organization was nearing, at or past the point of change saturation. Some symptoms of individual change saturation are disengagement, fatigue, burn out, anxiety, stress, confusion, frustration, feeling overwhelmed, cynicism, skepticism, automatic resistance, productivity declines, attrition and turnover, low morale, and absenteeism. During times of change saturation, leadership needs to establish and communicate priorities very effectively. Prepare employees by creating expectations that business now requires constant change, and it should be expected and prepared for. Still, leadership may need to consider delaying the launch of new projects until existing projects are confirmed to be successfully completed.
Finally, it is possible to experience successful organizational change. The results you are seeking depend on getting people to stop doing things the old way and getting them to start doing things a new way. And since people have a personal connection to how they work, there is just no way to do this impersonally. It is impossible to overcome people’s resistance to change without addressing the threat that change poses to their world.
References
- Best Practices in Change Management – 2009 Edition. Prosci.
- Bridges, William (2009). Managing Transitions: Making the most of change, 3rd edition. Perseus Books Group: Philadelphia.
- Kotter, John P. (2002). The Heart of Change: Real-life stories of how people change their organizations. Harvard Business School Publishing: Boston.
- Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B., & Lampel, Joseph (1998). Strategy Safari: A guides tour through the wilds of strategic management. Simon & Schuster, Inc.: New York.
- Schein, E. H. in The Leadership of the Future: Vision, strategies, and practices for the new era (2006). Leadership Competencies: A provocative new look. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 255 – 264.
- Ulrich, D. & Smallwood, N. (2007). Leadership Brand: Developing customer-focused leaders to drive performance and build lasting value. Harvard Business Publishing: Boston.
- Ulrich, D. & Ulrich, W. (2010). The Why of Work: How great leaders build abundant organizations that win. McGraw-Hill: New York.