Why Change Fails: Our Top 10
It has widely been reported that 70 per cent of change
programmes fail because of people-related issues. In a
world in which technology, business and market demands
are changing faster than ever, this is unacceptable. A business
that is unable to evolve because it’s too deeply entrenched in
its existing processes, systems and behaviours may find itself
ill-equipped to manage the demands of the future.
We’ve had the privilege of advising leaders from over 160
major organisations around the world. As a result, we’ve
recognised a number of patterns that begin to explain why
change can be so difficult.
These are many of the lessons that have helped us develop
our distinctive Blueprint for Change™ methodology.
1. Lack of context
When embarking on change, we have
observed that many senior teams
spend hours strategising about the
change they want to see. They come up
with a detailed plan and a strong conviction about why this needs to happen.
They communicate the plan – usually
in the form of a raft of disjointed initiatives - but fail to convey the rationale
for this activity. As a result, they find
that people either lack motivation and
sense of urgency, or they misinterpret
the change that needs to happen, or are
just plain confused.
Good leaders understand the need to
set the change within a clear and compelling story that helps people understand the why – as well as the what
and the how. Research from McKinsey
indicates that transformations with a
compelling change story are up to four
times more likely to succeed. Articulating the bigger picture is critical to help
people make sense of the demands
being made of them.
2. Lack of clarity (and perceived lack of relevance)
Clarity is just as important as context.
Large businesses tend to strategise
using abstract concepts: ‘we need to
delight our customers’ or ‘we need to
work smarter’. These are fine in principle, but are very difficult to execute
unless people understand what they
mean in practice. Management teams
often try to define the concept as
a quantifiable measure; for example,
increasing a net promoter score by a given figure, or giving examples of where
the business is having problems. Again,
neither of these provides the answer
that people are looking for.
While a clear and compelling vision is
necessary, it’s not sufficient to make
change happen. People need to understand why it matters to them. When
strategy is so high-level that it’s difficult
to translate into something practical,
granular and actionable, the dissemination of these messages is put at risk.
Managers lack confidence in communicating and acting on such strategic
messages because they simply can’t
see what this means to them.
The core, overarching message needs
to be articulated simply, clearly and in
a compelling way, and leaders need to
be able to interpret it in a way that’s
relevant to their part of the business,
showing what ‘good’ looks like through
real-life examples and anecdotes. Only
when people can understand what the
message means to them at a local level
will they engage in and act on it.
3. Lack of emotional connection (or perpetual analysis)
We don’t know of any highly successful
change programmes that worked simply because they had plenty of graphs,
charts and numbers. Leaders become
stuck in a cycle of perpetual analysis.
They continue to insist that once their
people understand the facts and the
logic for change, they will act. But there
are always more facts, and it feels much
more comfortable analysing them then
having to confront the fear that inevitably arises from the prospect of change.
And fear is the key word here. We are
hardwired to fear change. It is part of
our highly successful survival instincts.
Yet in the macho world of business, fear
is not seen as very ‘Alan Sugar’, and
leaders ignore it at their peril.
Creating an emotional connection, or
winning hearts as well as minds, will
unlock the discretionary effort that people put into their work. This often rests
on leaders within the business: how
authentic and emotionally intelligent
they are and their ability to build trust
and confidence within their teams.
It’s also about connecting people’s dayto-day work with the wider goals of
the business, then demonstrating its
impact on the end user. Stories can
play a powerful role in making this
connection; stories about endeavour
and achievement of customers and
colleagues, and how an action or behaviour has in some small way contributed
to the enhancement of their lives. We
are social beings, and the way in which
we interact with our fellow humans is
really what makes us tick.
4. Lack of leadership
This vacuum has been brought about by
the continuing consolidation and growing complexity of businesses. Many
of us work in massive organisations
that are led by complex management
structures. As a result, leaders who
inject some humanity into this complex
environment can exert huge power and
influence over their people, both through
what they say (outside the formal
company meetings) and how they act
and behave. Time and again, we hear
about the challenge of implementing
change through the middle management or ‘marzipan’ layer of the organisation. When we talk to these managers,
we often hear that they want to see
change as well, but don’t have the confidence that comes from strong support
and leadership from the top team.
Particularly in larger organisations, a
lack of leadership leads to the proliferation of far too many competing points
of view. A single employee may work
with several managers or leaders. At
worst, messages and direction received
through different perspectives and
behaviours will conflict with one another, and at best they’ll simply confuse
people. This adds to people’s innate
fear of change as they feel pulled in
different directions, told to both stop
and start certain actions and behaviours at the same time. The response
is then directed against the fear, rather than towards the change needed.
People go into fight, flight or freeze
mode instead of channelling their
energy and expertise into doing things
differently. People need a single
guiding light and a consistent set of
leadership behaviours to help them
navigate through change, against which
the different needs of the business can
then be prioritised.
5. Lack of active engagement
We refer to this as the ‘hero or victim
principle’, and it is especially relevant
in fast moving industries that must
adapt and change at pace. As new
technologies, structures and ways
of working are being implemented,
employees feel that the changes are
happening to them, and they become
focused on what will happen to their
colleagues and their abilities to do the job.
Successful change efforts focus on
giving employees a meaningful role in
the change that they are trying to create,
and recognising their contributions. This
includes involving them in generating
ideas for how to implement the change.
As was once famously said, ‘change
isn’t change if it’s your own idea’.
What active engagement leads to is a
sense of empowerment, ownership
and pride, which comes about when
people feel free enough to make the decision to buy into a particular vision for
change. This feeling of organic buy-in is
crucial for employees at all levels, from
the top management to the shop floor.
6. Lack of belief
Over the years, many senior leaders
have told us how frustrated they can
become about the intransigence of
people’s mindsets. ‘They just don’t
get the urgent need to change’ they
say. ‘We’ve got to make them believe.’
Whilst this may be true in some cases,
in our experience it’s not that people
don’t believe that a need for change
exists. It’s not that they’re apathetic. It’s
that they don’t believe that they, or the
business, can change. And the more
that senior leaders tell their people that
the gap between where they currently
are and where they need to be is huge,
the more their people believe that the
gap is insurmountable.
Employees and managers shouldn’t
dwell on the scale or difficulty of the
change. Rather than an overnight transition, change is an evolutionary process.
Consistent communication of success
stories as proof of progress will give
people a reason to believe that change
can happen. Leaders’ honesty about
the challenges their business faces,
and a clear route forward, will help build
credibility too. The Story they tell must
be rooted in reality for people to believe
it: a cosy picture of the future painted
through rose-tinted spectacles simply
won’t wash.
7. Lack of path clearing
Psychologists call this the ‘fundamental
attribution error’. If refers to our inclination to attribute people’s behaviour
to something inherent in who they are,
rather than the situation they are in. A
classic example of this is the behaviour
of call centre staff telling their customers
‘the computer says no’. Often, the
computer really is saying no! Employees are forced to deliver answers to
customers that they know are unhelpful. Another example is the manager whose behaviour towards his
colleagues is shaped by the workload
and bureaucracy of the job. Successfully evolving companies create good feedback loops that identify and clear the
path for the changes they want to see.
Companies stuck in a rut tend to blame
their people, not the situation they’ve
put them in.
Whether it’s aging IT systems or
ingrained cultural practices, employees are so often forced down change
pathways riddled with potholes and
roadblocks. Managers need to do all
they can to make sure that the pathway for change is clear of obstacles and
easy to see, listening to those at the
sharp end of the business to understand
exactly what the inhibitors are, and
involving them in finding the solution.
8. Lack of momentum
This is one of the most frustrating things
we’ve experienced. When a business
instigates a change initiative, and starts
to see pockets of people taking up the
challenge and driving improvements, it
then finds that these ‘pioneers’ remain
the exception rather than the norm.
Soon the whole initiative loses momentum and is dropped. It takes real effort
to find these pioneers, recognise their
contributions and encourage others
to follow. But unless there’s a mechanism to drive this, people will always
gravitate back towards the ‘way most
people do things around here’, with a
firmly reinforced view that the change
is unworkable.
As with the ‘lack of belief’, this is
another reason why change needs to
be presented to employees as an iterative, evolutionary process, not an overnight transformation. Quick wins lead
to small victories, and small victories
lead to larger ones. New behaviours
should be rooted as much as possible in
existing, comfortable ones that can
be made fit for purpose. And relentless communication is critical: keeping
the journey alive by recognising and
celebrating success along the way, never allowing those messages of change
be relegated to a shelf to gather dust.
9. Lack of consistency – and sustainability
This is the blight of the ‘next change
initiative’. The perception amongst many
employees is that people in head
office spend their whole time thinking
up new initiatives, launching them, then
losing interest and moving onto the next
one. As a management professor said
recently, the best way to ensure gridlock is to make sure that “the rate of
change on the decision-making level
should always be greater than on the
implementation level”.
Change takes both time and real
effort, and employees have become
savvy about where, when, and for
whom they’re best placed to exert this
discretionary effort. But when a leader
stands up the following year to re-engage their people in the journey they
are on, we’ve seen profound transformations in attitude – as long as it’s the
same journey, not a new one. Beware
the leader who instigates but doesn’t
sustain the change initiative.
10. Lack of integration
A sense of disconnection often arises
during the implementation of change.
There may be clear and consistent
communication, a genuine focus on
the adoption of new ways of working,
even a good degree of engagement
and commitment. However this can get
diluted and overshadowed by everything
else that’s going on.
Successful change efforts need to tie
everything back to the overall journey,
not just to the change taking place. This
includes the role of current initiatives
and ways of working, responses to
unforeseen circumstances, new initiatives, and ideas and innovations – and
not just ‘the future’. Leaders must be
confident in stopping or saying ‘no’
to those activities that do not support
the journey. An overarching corporate
narrative provides a relevant and
flexible framework for these conversations, helping to integrate all actions
and behaviours into the wider journey
on an ongoing basis. And stories of
achievement become the currency
of successful change: change with a
human face.
The Storytellers’ methodology addresses
all of the issues we’ve talked about above.
For further information, please contact:
Alison Esse
Joint Managing Director
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7590 5454
Mob: +44 (0) 7768 890836