Survey Shows Business Leaders More Successful at Major Change During the Recession
A press release that we just sent out:
A new online survey, by leading change management firm Maurer & Associates Inc., of the challenge of change in organizations today found 33 percent of leaders were more successful at implementing major change during the last 12 months than in the last 5 years. This contrasts with 14 percent who stated they were less successful and 31 percent who experienced no change.
Survey responses also revealed that 48 percent of organizations have experienced rapid major change during this recession, and 29 percent of respondents believe the economic recession has positively impacted their employee’s readiness to change. At the same time, only 20 percent of the respondents believed they were highly skilled at leading or managing these rapid changes while 55 percent believed they were somewhat skilled.
“Business leaders are demonstrating the importance of developing strong change management skills. One of the most remarkable findings was that 69 percent of respondents indicated they were involved in or impacted by major change in their organization several times a year,” said Rick Maurer, president of Maurer & Associates, Inc. and best-selling business book author. “Given the constant demand to change and people’s natural resistance to change, leaders will have to become much more effective at effectively leading change.”
In addition to discovering the frequency of major change and the success rate of major change, the survey also looked at the time it takes to implement major change. Over 36 percent of organizations responded that it takes 1 year to less than 3 years to fully implement a major change while 23 percent said it takes 6 months to less than 1 year.
According to Maurer, “It’s never too late to build strong change management skills, even if your change project has derailed. New skills can be learned to move your project back on track.”
The full survey results are available at: Change Survey Results http://www.changewithoutmigraines.com/opensource/osp.htm (Scroll to bottom of the page to see the results.)
May 13th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Having been on the call where Rick analyzed and discussed these findsings, it raised several other questions for me:
Who measures success of change, how and when?
What explains why leaders are more successful with change now than they were before?
In what areas would it be most helpful to build skills around change management?
As with all good research this raises more questions Rick — good ones I think we all need to think about, ask ourselves and explore with our clients.