The subject of change management is one of the most important for leaders to study and become competent. The reason for this is that change is inevitable: either from external forces or internal, change WILL BE a part of your life. How well you handle change can go a long way in making or breaking your career. If nothing else it can be a decisive limiting factor on your upward mobility. No doubt you have already seen the effects of change management in your life, either as a participant who has had to deal with the effects of change, as the architect of a change effort, or the leader of the change effort. If you are like most of us, you have seen successful change efforts and complete failures.
The subject of this post is NOT to describe the process of change management, nor offer advice about how to implement change effectively. There are a lot of good books on this subject and if you haven’t read any of them then I recommend you start with John Kotter’s book on Leading Change and Dan & Chip Heath’s book titled Switch. What I will do in this post is to share the three areas where I feel there is the greatest possibility of break down in the change process with the hope that you will use those thoughts to review the change process(es) underway at your organization or in your life.
1. Nebulous goals. You know you need to make a change but can’t figure out what the “new” will look like. If this is you and you are in the middle of change effort you and possibly your organization are at great risk. There is almost no way to win this scenario because neither you nor anyone else knows what a “win” would look like. I take that back, some within your organization believe they know what a win looks like, but it is unlikely that all those involved agree, which is a recipe for disaster. You need to be able to clearly articulate why you need a change and what the end results of that change will look like. That message needs to be clear, and repeatedly emphasized to all the relevant constituents. This is the primary role of leadership and it CANNOT be delegated. The leader must be demonstratively behind the change or it will falter and fail. When, not if, that happens it is not those who are implementing the change who will suffer, unless they are the scapegoat. It is the leader who loses credibility, making it harder to trust him/her for future change efforts, and the institution which has failed to fully reach the benefits that a full implementation of the change would bring. Before you start any change effort make sure you know what the goal of that change is: paint a picture of what success looks like in your mind. Create a virtual image, then make it real to your people by helping to see that image. Know WHERE you are going!
2. Lack of Urgency. The second most common area in change management where leaders drop the ball is in the area of urgency. Without a high enough level of urgency, the change effort will languish at best, and fail completely at worst. What is a high enough level of urgency? It is that level at which the relevant constituents experience enough personnel threat to their lifestyle that they can no longer hide from the truth that a change is needed. Obviously this level is going to be different for every individual, which makes the issue of urgency somewhat slippery for leaders to deal with. Yet, without urgency change simply will not happen. It is the leader’s role to keep the “why” of the change at the forefront. I will go farther and suggest it is the leader’s responsibility to foster urgency, even to the point of creating urgency, depending upon the goal. Cortes understood this when he arrived in the New World in 1519 with 600 men and created urgency by burning the ships on which they had arrived, eliminating the chance to retreat and forcing change. When urgency is felt at every level of the organization anything can be accomplished. Without urgency, something else less threatening will move to the center of focus. Know WHY you are going!
2. Neglect to embed the change within the culture. Leaders drop the ball in the change effort when they fail to take sufficient time to embed the change into the culture of the organization. Too many times leaders quit focusing on the change once the major goal has been achieved. This is a mistake. Change takes time to become the new norm. Let me say that again: Change takes time to become the new norm. Without focused effort at the level of the Leader, and pushed downward through the organization, change efforts will erode and devolve back to some similarity of what was in place to begin with. We humans are creatures of habit. Changing our habits takes time and repeated reminders. It is easy to see this in our personal lives when we attempt to change a long term habit and replace it with a new one. There is a period where we have to continually remind ourselves of our new habit. If we lose focus, it is all too easy to fade back into the old way of doing things. In fact it is often the case that we routinely rationalize ways to continuing doing things the old way even when we know better. The same is true for organizations. How long does it take to embed a change within the culture? That depends. If you have burned your ships then you have no other options, but in most cases I have found it will require as long as 2 years of focused attention by the leader before it is safe to go on to other things. When leaders fail to take the time to embed the change within the culture of their organization they discover the truth of Peter Drucker’s statement: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Most change efforts which actually reach their goals never achieve their full potential because they are not sufficiently supported until they become part of the culture. Embed change in CULTURE.
Conclusion: These, in my opinion, are the most common areas where leaders drop the ball in change management.
- Nebulous goals
- Lacy of Urgency
- Failure to embed change within the culture
I hope you will ponder these as you talk about your over charge effects and make sure you don’t drop any balls.