How to Deliver Successful Change Management (Part 6)

Read parts 1 to 5 of this six part series here:

How to Deliver Successful Change Management (Part 1)

How to Deliver Successful Change Management (Part 2)

How to Deliver Successful Change Management (Part 3)

How to Deliver Successful Change Management (Part 4)

How to Deliver Successful Change Management (Part 5)

There are a number of consistent reasons why change and transformation fail to deliver to the degree expected or fail completely. As as change management speaker and advisor these are the ones I have seen most frequently.

Not seeing the need for change

The first is not a failure of change, but the failure to see the need for it, which is perhaps even worse.

Organisations which focus inwards rather than paying attention to the world around them have a habit of missing signals that change is required.

Every time this happens it means that when they are eventually forced to change to get up to speed the size and impact of that change will be have to be significantly larger and more challenging than if they had completed a number of smaller changes overtime. At some point the level of change can become so great that it is then not possible to achieve.

As a change management speaker I use the example of Kodak not adopting digital camera technology, sticking to film and failing is a good example. In their case it was even worse as they saw the change need but refused to change, a number of times over a period of years.

Too many changes can overwhelm people

The simple reality is that most organisations, if you take a holistic overview, there are probably too many change initiatives running at any time. You may have strategic initiatives, departmental initiatives, and even change within teams.

Those operating at strategic level will only see the ones they have initiated; they won’t necessarily see all the others which people further down the organisation are also having to implement.

I’ll never forget a comment from the CEO of a global logistics company to the assembled leaders when I finished my keynote and mentioned this challenge as they were going through transformation. He said “Chris is right. We need to focus on the critical changes to deliver real success, not just a tsunami of changes we think are a good idea because our people just can’t do everything.”

With change coming from all directions people just get overwhelmed and don’t know what to do, don’t know what’s most important, and their fall back position is to do what their boss tells them. That might well be some form of local change rather than change which directly supports strategic change and transformation.

Unrealistic expectations & incomplete implementation

It’s obvious that unrealistic expectations of the time it takes to implement and embed change will cause a problem. As a minimum there will be a time overrun and potentially people will get disenchanted, momentum may decline, and as a result implementation never be fully completed.

But there is another problem which often remains unidentified and which in my view is the reason that many change initiatives don’t deliver on expectations. This is driven by executive team and other business leaders expectations not being managed by change project managers. 

We all know from our experience that we feel much more positive when we tell our bosses good news, so we’d much rather tell them good news and bad news. This simple emotional bias leads to a problem with strategic change initiatives.

As previously explained you may have 15 to 20% early adopters who are implementing the change. Thus when asked by your boss if the change is being successfully implemented there could be a justification to confirm that it is, even though the reality is that potentially 75% of the employee population hasn’t seriously engaged in implementation as yet.

Naturally your boss is happy to receive this good news and then passes it up the system. If your colleagues give their boss the same information it gets to the strategic level with a clear message that the changes which senior leaders wanted are being implemented.

The strategic leadership of the organisation now thinks that the implementation is moving forward swiftly and successfully and they can then start preparing to launch the next change initiative in their grand plan.

The problem is that, as major change and transformation takes many months if not years to implement and embed, if, based on the information they are receiving, strategic leaders think the implementation is nearly completed, they will then push another change down through the organisation.

The impact is that further down the organisation you end up with people who haven’t implemented the first change initiative then suddenly being asked to implement a new one.

What do they think ? We have all seen it before, they quickly come to the conclusion that there is no point implementing any change initiative because by the time they have another one will have appeared and therefore the best course of action is to ignore them all and carry on as normal.

Image from chrisroebuck.live

I have frequently heard this justification for not implementing change in many organisations from mid-level leaders and below.

More insight on this in Forbes from Brent Gleeson.

Leaders don’t lead

Even before the planning and launch of any change or transformation, organisations must look at the leadership capability and culture of the organisation to ensure  leaders at all levels are capable and motivated to get the best from their people and then focus that effort on to what delivers success.

If they can’t do that the change won’t get implemented and, in addition, day-to-day performance will be significantly below what it should be. Not only that but this creates the following problem which then is also likely to block successful implementation.

Employees don’t care

If employees don’t care, implementation will just not happen. There may be token efforts at implementation to get the required “ticks in boxes” but in reality the change will never embed or spread across the organisation.

If employees don’t care the cause is likely to be ineffective leadership at strategic and operational level which has offered them a poor plan, poorly positioned, poorly communicated and poorly launched.

They’ve seen that leaders don’t lead well or genuinely care about their people, so they think why should they care about the organisation. This was a key driver of the Great Resignation and continues to power Quiet Quitting.

But the damage isn’t just about the impact on this specific change. It also makes employees sceptical or suspicious of any future changes they might be asked to implement.

Inflexible plan

One of the challenges that senior leaders sometimes have during implementation is distinguishing the difference between determination to succeed and arrogance. All successful change and transformation adapts during implementation.

Trying to stick to the original plan and force it through despite events or feedback that suggests adaption is needed is counter productive.

There is significant evidence that inflexibility can also be linked to lack of regular progress reviews and assessments. If such reviews aren’t happening at all levels and feeding back up then any need for adaption will be missed so increasing the chances of ineffective implementation.

Poor communication and engagement

As with any form of effective organisational delivery people need to know what’s going on and need to be engaged in the process. Successful change and transformation is about it being implemented “with” people rather than “to” people.

As has been suggested communication and engagement must start during the development of the implementation plan so all involved feel they have real input and contribution to the outcome. That’s driven by the point made about our brains resisting change that we can’t control or have no say in.

Culture clashes

This is often a challenge in M&A scenarios. People tend to resist when they are told their way of doing things isn’t right and they need to change.

When there are significant cultural differences I’ve found that the best way to move people forwards is, as well as presenting compelling organisational and personal benefits for the change, to encourage people to focus on “the best of both”. That’s where those from both sides of the cultural divide sit down and identify what are the best elements of their current culture.

What happens in most cases is that the best elements, eg professionalism, quality, forward thinking, will tend to be common between them. Thus revealing that in reality they have more in common than they have differences and get them to agree on a set of common behaviours they will all act on.   

But this isn’t always easy.

The developing merger between UBS and Credit Suisse will be one where there is significant culture clash and it’s likely that, to make sure the merger is effective as quickly as possible to stabilise the markets view, for the Credit Suisse side it will be more done “to” than done “with”.   

For more insight on these issues this summary HBR article may help together with this from John P Kotter.

Effective Change Management : Leaders role

There are some really simple practical steps which both line managers and senior leaders can take to significantly increase the chances of you change or transformation being successful

Image from chrisroebuck.live

Line managers

3 simple steps ensure that change is successful at all levels of the organisation and across the organisation. Line managers must be capable of implementing these.

Step 1. Firm Foundation

Ensuring that every leader has a firm foundation of development in critical task delivery skills – vital for implementing change. Prioritisation, time management, delegation, communication and giving feedback.

Evidence would suggest that, for example, up to 70% of line managers have not received formal development in effective delegation. Have you?

In the case of delegation a simple 15-minute introduction to the topic has been shown to give most line managers an extra half day a week free time.

It is this firm foundation which enables effective control of the change agenda which then allows that extra time for leaders to implement the next step – getting the best from people to implement the change.

Step 2. Get employee best effort

Leaders should focus on the actions which they are already doing which deliver the highest return on investment (ROI) for their effort, eg asking people for ideas, developing them, empowering, explaining how their work contributes to organisational success, as a leader leading by example, showing you care, understanding people make genuine mistakes, giving regular day to day feedback amongst others. But above all building trust. This is perhaps the most critical.

These steps positively impact the emotional more than the rational perspectives of employees, thus delivering the significant extra emotionally driven effort quoted earlier.

All leaders will have experienced these actions over their career from their own leaders so can easily utilise them to get more effort from employees.

Step 3. Focus effort onto your change or transformation

It’s possible for a team to work very hard doing something which adds no significant benefit to implementing your change because it’s not aligned to that strategic objective. So to get maximum ROI from employees giving their best, that best must focus on specific actions that deliver your change.

This is why everyone understanding the big picture and having line of sight to strategic objectives is so important. They can align action and measure what they’re doing. But also adapt the change plan to maintain that alignment if needed. Within a wider context this will start to break down silos across the organisation and motivate them more.

Senior leaders – example and multiplier

C-Suite executives and other senior leaders need to lead by example – leading implementation with their teams and creating the example for other leaders to follow. Any change or transformation I’ve seen which has been launched but not been role modelled by senior leadership has achieved limited impact.

This must include frequent visible presence of senior leaders communicating to engage people at all levels in the change and showing genuine interest in people, delivery and progress. Town Halls are a great way of achieving this as are front line visits to engage with employees.

We are all human – key to successful change

Image from brainyquote

If there is one key focus I think would make change and transformation more effective I quote as a change management speaker it’s simply to remember that to make change happen successfully people need to want to make it happen.  Ask yourself the question “If someone presented this change to me this way would I be engaged and want to make it work ?”

Aristotles reflection from 2350 years ago encapsulates the need for change to be seen as positive. It was true then and its still true today, engaged people give their best, and thats more than just doing their job well. They genuinely care about the organisations success, they have an emotional connection. which gives all the benefits I’ve set out.

To get that engagement we want to be told what the need for change is, where is it taking us, what’s the benefit, to organisation and to me, will my ideas and input considered, does it make logical sense and does it “feel” right.

If at every stage of your change all involved can answer positively those questions then your change is likely to succeed as everyone commits to making it work at every stage of the journey. 

Good luck on your journey !  

Additional useful insights and resources from Mercer, PWC and CIPD.

This was first republished on chrisroebuck.live.