Why doesn't change work?

I came across the Towers Watson Change and Communication ROI study via The Street, with a quote from Kathryn Yates, global leader of communication consulting at Towers Watson, saying “less than half [of major organizational changes] stay on schedule, come in at — or under — budget or hold people accountable for deadlines... The average survey respondent went through three major changes in the past two years.” This set me thinking about some of the change programmes I’ve worked on and the things I’ve learned.

In my experience the challenges lie in four key areas: leadership, culture, engagement/ownership and management.

Leadership

Senior people sponsor all sorts of initiatives and there is always something new around the corner that will distract their attention. I think this is one of the reasons why there is often a fanfare at the beginning of a change programme – because the people managing it want to show the senior folk that they are getting on with it. However, the next change team will be doing the same thing, and the next, and so it goes on.  The ideal here is to try and link all the changes together, somehow, so that the leadership team don’t feel that they are sponsoring lots of simultaneous programmes, and lose focus or interest.

It’s easier to achieve change if people know that the senior leadership team want it but it’s not enough on its own. One place where I worked I countered some resistance with the immortal phrase “The Managing Director is really keen for this to happen” to which the response was, “Oh he’s always going on about that.”

Culture

Some cultures are just more willing to accept change than others. Some of it may be down to industry – where they are fleet of foot they may be more prepared to (and used to) change. Perhaps it’s more to do with longevity – the longer something has been the same the more difficult it is to change it. But I have also seen the other side of the coin – change had happened so often that people were fed up with it. The lesson here might be to let change settle in and learn from it before going on to change it again.

Engagement/ownership

These are not exactly the same thing, but the problems are the same so that’s why I’ve lumped them together.  For me, ownership is about taking something on, moulding it for that particular purpose or function and being accountable for it. Engagement (in change terms) is more about being willing to change behaviour so that the end result can be achieved. Either way, lack of it is the kiss of death.

The key is to get past the intellectual agreement to a change to it being embraced in practice. An early lesson I learned – just because somebody agrees that something needs to be done doesn’t necessarily mean that they will actually do something different when it comes to it.  Don’t walk away thinking, “I can tick that off my list now, they understand why change needs to happen.”

Avoiding the feeling of change being ‘done to’ people is also preferable. To help with this, I still like William Bridges' work on change/transition best (search for it if you don't know it, there's loads of references). 

Management

Well of course there are vast quantities of resources dedicated to the successful management of change so I’m not going to encapsulate this in a paragraph. I think the key problem is that there is a tendency to plan too far in advance. I can honestly say I have never worked on a programme where the original milestones were met. Something unexpected always happens. So plans need to be flexible enough to accommodate this.

I also think that many programmes are overly ambitious in their timescales and their budget (the latter often dependent upon the former, of course).  You can see why – you need to sell it to the leadership team and they want lots quickly for not much money.

And so?

Some things I’ve learned:

• Small steps are better – easier to sell to the leadership team (they don’t need to worry about a massive impact on their people); easier to plan; easier to achieve and quicker to get on with. Just make sure that the small steps are all going towards the right point on the horizon.
• Pilots are great – in line with the above, people will buy a pilot more than a wodge of change in one go. You also learn more, you’ll engage more people who will own it (champions!) as they have been involved in it and that will make the full change more effective.
• Keep everyone informed on progress – yes, they may think “not that programme again” but that’s better than them thinking “whatever happened to that – did it fail?” The right level of detail is important – keep it high, maybe even just a few bullet points with more information available for those that want it.

Anybody got experiences to share?