Change Management News

Reasons why so many changes fail #11 A Belief That You Can Force Them to Do It

No, you can’t. People can find all types of creative ways to stop you in your tracks. For instance, the president of a small company once told me that his idea was dying due to “malicious compliance.” People did just enough to stay out of trouble and keep him off their backs, but not enough to make the change a success.

There are a few exceptions to this. Read the rest of this entry »

My friend (and former teacher) Carolyn Lukensmeyer believes in democracy. She has dedicated her life to it. Fifteen years ago she founded AmericaSpeaks, a group dedicated to getting people from across the political and cultural spectrums together to talk about things that matter. She recently ran an event where 3500 participants in some 60 communities met Read the rest of this entry »

Reasons why so many changes fail #10 Moving to How Before Why

Moving to how before people know why a change is needed.

People need to know why something is important before they can get interested or even be willing to hear why you want them to do it. Too often we fail to address “why” something is important before we launch into explaining “how” it should get done. I am not interested in the explanation of how until you’ve convinced me why this is important.

I have been subject to many lengthy PowerPoint presentations Read the rest of this entry »

Reasons why so many changes fail #9 Lack of Trust Can Kill Change

Leaders fail to acknowledge how even a slight lack of trust and confidence in leaders can kill an otherwise fine idea

Trust can make or break a change. But sadly, many who lead change seem to ignore this critically important ingredient. Read the rest of this entry »

Reasons why so many changes fail #8 Leaders fail to appreciate the power of fear Fear of change is deeply personal. The thought of a big change can evoke pictures of relocations or downsizing. People worry that they may be fired. They worry about their families and their careers. Personal fear trumps the organization’s need to change. Read the rest of this entry »

Reasons why so many changes fail #6 Assume Understanding Equals Support

Leaders assume that understanding equals support and commitment

It is common to introduce change by making a PowerPoint presentation to a large group. Leaders may schedule time for Q&A, but the questions they get from their audiences tend to be very polite. After all, who wants to tell the boss they don’t think this is a good idea? People learn to limit their comments to questions about time lines and budgets. They know those are safe questions. Any reservations or fears go underground and only get spoken about in hallways and carpools. Read the rest of this entry »

Reasons why so many changes fail #13 Making Them Learn Your Language — instead of learning theirs.

Old MIS (Management Information Systems) departments often had the reputation of speaking some foreign language when they worked with senior management and other departments. They made the critical mistake of speaking their language and not translating so that their audience could understand them. It is your job to be “multilingual” so that various stakeholders can understand what you are saying. I have seen IT, HR, financial, and sales and marketing departments kill their own effort to make a case simply because they expected their audiences to learn their jargon. Big mistake.

(This is adapted from my forthcoming book, Beyond the Wall of Resistance: Why 70% of Changes Still Fail – and What To Do About It. You can preorder the book by clicking on the link you see on this page.)

Reasons why so many changes fail #5:  Immunity to Change

Robery Kegan and Lisa Lahey found this immunity works against our best-efforts to follow through on plans.

Kegan and Lahey’s work dovetails nicely with Pfeffer and Sutton’s knowing-doing gap. In their book, Immunity to Change, they identify hidden commitments that get in the way of our ability to work on our goals. Weight loss is a good example of this. Tabloids give us new diets every week. We know that human physiology hasn’t changed since last Thursday, but we still hope that there might be some new finding that makes losing weight easy. Read the rest of this entry »

Reasons why so many changes fail #4 The Knowing-Doing Gap. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton found a severe knowing-doing gap in organizations.

Although they found organizations that did turn knowledge into action, more often they found that, “Other organizations composed of intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working, nice people, fail to translate their knowledge about organizational performance into action. It is almost as if there were some kind of brain vacuum in those firms that sucks the wisdom and insight out of their people.” The Knowing Doing Gap, page 6).

And they point out they in most cases it is not the people who are at fault.

Reasons why so many changes fail #3 We Know Too Much

I just did an Amazon search on “change management” and got 1344 hits. With all this knowledge, why don’t we do better?

We’ve got more theories and four-square consulting models than we need. Somewhere, there is a denuded forest with a placard that reads, “These trees died happily so that millions of pages of books, articles, assessment tools, and printouts of PowerPoint slides on change management could enter large organizations and rest comfortably as shelfware.”

Reasons why so many changes fail #2

In my own work with clients, many (maybe most) know what it takes to lead change well. And yet, something gets in the way.

It’s like there is a secret society of people who lead change and all members must agree to abide by The Big Book of Rules for Leading Change.  Here are a couple.

Never, but never, allow emotions into meetings. It is a sign of weakness. If people react emotionally to a change something must be wrong with them. As the comedian Emo Philips said, “real men don’t have souls.”

Whatever idea you come up with is good (because you are the leader after all and you grew up in a generation where your parents told you could do no wrong), therefore others better get with the program and find out where you hid that cheese today.

The Mad Hatter got it right when he said, “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. No time to say hello, good-by, I’m late, I’m late.” Translation: no time to get people involved.

And this list could go on. Of course, most leaders would scoff at that list, but when you watch them (and us) in action, those rules sure look like they are alive and well, don’t they?

Reason why so many changes fail #1

I think Abba Eban (statesman 1915-2002) got it right when he said: “Nations and men may behave wisely once they’ve exhausted all other alternatives.”

Somehow we believe we are immune from the rules of what works. We often assume that because we not only believe we are right – in fact, we know we are right – so that the rules that other mortals must follow don’t really pertain to us. We’ve got God, country, our own brilliance, mojo, or whatever working for us. As you’ll see in subsequent posts this is a big mistake.

When I wrote the first version of Beyond the Wall of Resistance in 1996, 70% of changes in organizations failed. Today, the failure rate is still 70%. That’s what I’ll explore in these daily blurts.  Stay tuned.

We just created a fan page on Facebook to support the publication of the new revised paperback version on Beyond the Wall of Resistance. The new sub-title – Why 70% of Changes Still Fail -and What To Do About It is the focus of this “new” book.  I will putting lots of tips and other resources on this page.

If you do Facebook, please consider joining me. Type “beyond the wall” and you’ll find it.  Or click here. Of, if you prefer Twitter, you can join me.

Great article in this morning’s The Wall Street Journal titled Recalculating the Costs of Big Layoffs. Lots of good hard-number examples. It still amazes me after so many years of solid research on the impact of downsizing (see Wayne Cascio’s work for starter) that it still seems to be the default reaction when costs have to be cut.

I encourage you to read this fine article by Scott Thurm and pass it along.