Why organisational change fails

If you articulate a clear, positive vision for the future and explain why that change is necessary, the chances are much higher that your desired change will be embraced. Poor communication will have many children. One of those will be staff members who resist the change due to ego and self-interest. Without a full understanding of why a change is needed, some employees will be threatened by it and thus will resist it out of perceived self-interest; they need to protect their little fiefdom.

Another bastard child of poor communication are those employees who will feel alienated or excluded. What is a business? It is a group of people united to create a desired, profitable result. Who is tasked with implementing a change in that business? Yep, those same people. The number one reason why change efforts fail is because the case for making the change is not sufficiently articulated to employees, and therefore, is never fully adopted. Changing the vision or direction of an organisation requires careful forethought and consideration.

If a change process is launched too quickly or without a proper plan then it is likely to false start, meet resistance, and eventually fail.

Real transformation takes time, and risks losing momentum if there are no short-term goals to aim for and celebrate. That is when they too will begin to change their own behaviours and move the change effort ahead. The importance of celebrating short-term wins cannot be understated. One to two years into a successful transformation effort, you find quality beginning to go up on certain indices or the decline in net income stopping.

You find some successful new product introductions or an upward shift in market share. You find an impressive productivity improvement or a statistically higher customer-satisfaction rating. But whatever the case, the win is unambiguous. The result is not just a judgment call that can be discounted by those opposing change. Creating short-term wins is different from hoping for short-term wins. The latter is passive, the former active. In a successful transformation, managers actively look for ways to obtain clear performance improvements, establish goals in the yearly planning system, achieve the objectives, and reward the people involved with recognition, promotions, and even money.

For example, the guiding coalition at a U. The new product was selected about six months into the effort because it met multiple criteria: it could be designed and launched in a relatively short period; it could be handled by a small team of people who were devoted to the new vision; it had upside potential; and the new product-development team could operate outside the established departmental structure without practical problems.

Little was left to chance, and the win boosted the credibility of the renewal process. When it becomes clear to people that major change will take a long time, urgency levels can drop. Commitments to produce short-term wins help keep the urgency level up and force detailed analytical thinking that can clarify or revise visions.

After a few years of hard work, managers may be tempted to declare victory with the first clear performance improvement. While celebrating a win is fine, declaring the war won can be catastrophic.

In the recent past, I have watched a dozen change efforts operate under the reengineering theme. In all but two cases, victory was declared and the expensive consultants were paid and thanked when the first major project was completed after two to three years.

Within two more years, the useful changes that had been introduced slowly disappeared. Typically, the problems start early in the process: the urgency level is not intense enough, the guiding coalition is not powerful enough, and the vision is not clear enough.

But it is the premature victory celebration that kills momentum. And then the powerful forces associated with tradition take over. Ironically, it is often a combination of change initiators and change resistors that creates the premature victory celebration.

In their enthusiasm over a clear sign of progress, the initiators go overboard. They are then joined by resistors, who are quick to spot any opportunity to stop change. After the celebration is over, the resistors point to the victory as a sign that the war has been won and the troops should be sent home. Weary troops allow themselves to be convinced that they won.

Once home, the foot soldiers are reluctant to climb back on the ships. Soon thereafter, change comes to a halt, and tradition creeps back in. Instead of declaring victory, leaders of successful efforts use the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle even bigger problems. They go after systems and structures that are not consistent with the transformation vision and have not been confronted before. They pay great attention to who is promoted, who is hired, and how people are developed.

They include new reengineering projects that are even bigger in scope than the initial ones. They understand that renewal efforts take not months but years. In fact, in one of the most successful transformations that I have ever seen, we quantified the amount of change that occurred each year over a seven-year period.

On a scale of one low to ten high , year one received a two, year two a four, year three a three, year four a seven, year five an eight, year six a four, and year seven a two. The peak came in year five, fully 36 months after the first set of visible wins. Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are subject to degradation as soon as the pressure for change is removed.

Two factors are particularly important in institutionalizing change in corporate culture. The first is a conscious attempt to show people how the new approaches, behaviors, and attitudes have helped improve performance. When people are left on their own to make the connections, they sometimes create very inaccurate links.

For example, because results improved while charismatic Harry was boss, the troops link his mostly idiosyncratic style with those results instead of seeing how their own improved customer service and productivity were instrumental. Helping people see the right connections requires communication. Indeed, one company was relentless, and it paid off enormously. Time was spent at every major management meeting to discuss why performance was increasing.

The company newspaper ran article after article showing how changes had boosted earnings. The second factor is taking sufficient time to make sure that the next generation of top management really does personify the new approach.

One bad succession decision at the top of an organization can undermine a decade of hard work. Poor succession decisions are possible when boards of directors are not an integral part of the renewal effort.

In at least three instances I have seen, the champion for change was the retiring executive, and although his successor was not a resistor, he was not a change champion. Because the boards did not understand the transformations in any detail, they could not see that their choices were not good fits.

The retiring executive in one case tried unsuccessfully to talk his board into a less seasoned candidate who better personified the transformation. They were wrong. Within two years, signs of renewal began to disappear at both companies. There are still more mistakes that people make, but these eight are the big ones. I realize that in a short article everything is made to sound a bit too simplistic.

In reality, even successful change efforts are messy and full of surprises. But just as a relatively simple vision is needed to guide people through a major change, so a vision of the change process can reduce the error rate. And fewer errors can spell the difference between success and failure.

You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. They must be active, consistently supporting the change teams as they design and implement changes. They must be out communicating the benefits of the change to stakeholders and listening to and responding to their concerns.

Forbes magazine supports the fact leadership support plays a crucial role for the success of organizational change, saying that successful change initiatives start at the top and organizations should "s et up a top-level team of experts, reporting directly to the CEO". Lack of resources is one of the most common reasons why organizational change fails in most organizations. Adoption and sustainment of change are long term investments. It has to get implemented, and then tested, refined , and reinforced.

This generally is a longer, and costlier endeavor than most change leaders realize. Leaders often focus more on the system changes than the people that have to make and live with them.

Be sure that your leaders equally prioritize and attend to the system changes AND the people. One could easily argue that this is the 1 cause of failed organizational change.