Managing Change - The Wrong Approach

I often ask clients how they would handle challenges associated with leading change. Questions like: how would you get started? How would you know that you had made a compelling case? What would you do if resistance threatened to stop the project?

And typically, people respond in ways that show they really understand what it takes to lead change well. For example, they know that you need to make a compelling for change in order to get people interested and committed. They know what it takes to get started. They know what it takes to get back on track. And, not quite so often, they know how to keep change alive so they get real results from all that effort.

Given their responses, you'd think that most changes would go relatively smoothly and their organizations would get a great deal of benefit from these changes. But, you'd be wrong.

Experience - and research - indicate that only about one-third of all major changes in organizations succeed. Most go way over budget, miss deadlines by a significant amount, or just die before completion. And many of the changes that do get implemented never deliver on the initial promise.

I wondered, why is there such as big gap between what people know about leading change and what they actually do?

I think I found the answer - it's fear. When the pressure is on to produce, leaders (and the rest of us) get scared. This "I'm late, I'm late for a very important date" urgency leads people to make bad decisions.

Imagine your organization needs to cut costs significantly over the coming year. Leaders get scared. They know they should get people involved in grappling with this crisis. The leaders even give lip-service to doing so, but the urge to do something quickly takes over. Senior leaders meet behind closed doors and work out plans. In my experience, most of these leaders mean well, and are not, on average, brutish louts. They just get scared. Fear that opening things up - allowing people to help shape the future - could result in chaos and dissension. And they know that will just make things worse. Without considering the consequences of making command decisions - the leaders make command decisions.

They announce the plans. Other stakeholders wonder what all the fuss is about. Nobody took the time to include them in the loop so that they could see the looming crisis. So all this just sounds like a flavor of the month idea to them. Leaders try to get things moving, but others know all types of ways of avoiding this work. As a client once said, "all I got was malicious compliance." At this point in the article I could recommend that you read a book on change. And, as an author of such books, that might be what you would expect. But, no. I'd like you to try something else. Close the door, sit back and consider times when you've been on the receiving end of an organizational change that didn't go so well. Ask yourself, what went wrong? What would I have liked leaders to do?

Would you have liked them to make a compelling case for change? If so, what would have helped? How would you have liked them to get started? Would you have liked to have been involved? If so, what would that involvement look like?

Major changes can take months, even years, to see results. What type of leadership and support would you have liked that could have allowed you and others to make real progress?

In the event that things started to go off track and stakeholders started getting angry, how would you have liked leaders to have handled things?

My hunch is that this simple exercise will give you a fine foundation for what it takes to lead change effectively. I wish you well.

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