Industries are commoditizing and consolidating. There are new regulations and legislative impacts on their way. Consumer trends are changing in the blink of an eye. Emerging global markets are becoming legitimate markets daily. Great leaders see these changes.
And the best leaders not only have a point of view about how to respond to these changes and be successful, but they also know what it will take organizationally to execute those changes. Despite such insights about the need for change, research shows that at least 50% of organizations are not ready to change.
7 Signs of a need for change within an organization
Decades of experience working with organizations and leaders in search of necessary change reveal several patterns of why their efforts fail – reasons that are largely identifiable, predictable, and avoidable. Let’s look at the most common.
1. Lack of clarity about success
An unclear vision for the changes and the business case supporting those changes, or the lack of strategic clarity and the way proposed changes will enable the strategy ultimately. These often undermine the effort to actually change.
2. Mismatch between challenge and approach
Leaders frequently underestimate how ambitious the changes to which they are aspiring are and overestimate the efficacy of the approach they have put in place to realize those changes. The reverse is also common: over engineering the approach to incremental business changes.
3. Insufficient alignment and commitment
Overestimating the amount of leadership alignment that exists and not developing capability for alignment at multiple levels in the organization will ensure an understanding/commitment gap between those ‘in the know’ and the rest of the organization.
4. Fragmented approach to change
Leaders gravitate toward the levers most common to the organization and familiar to their leadership. The numbers guy ensures change through financial metrics. The culture gal makes sure everyone has input on the impact of change. Change that doesn’t take into account the entire system and integrate all parts of the business ends up duplicating change resources (e.g., function by function versus systemic spend) or creating competing change resources (e.g., “I’ll fight for what I need at the expense of what you need to be successful.”).
5. Poor implementation planning
The worst case is the declaration of change with no plan. However, more frequently one of two extremes surfaces: Plan for action versus results or, figure it out as you go. Those that espouse activity over results are more concerned with creating the illusion of change than they are tying the mechanics of change to specific work that ensure needed outcomes. Those who land in the ‘figure it out as you go’ camp, don’t believe you can plan for every road block before beginning so they take a pay later approach to managing change, which slows results, costs more, and is more taxing on those involved. Inadequate resources to execute the changes and manage the transition will ensure the old cliché, “fail to plan, plan to fail.”
6. Lack of Focus and Energy
Change is taxing. Often organizations focus on long-term outcomes and spend minimal attention on transition metrics that track the progress of change, highlight early wins and build momentum, or get change back on track before the effort completely derails.
7. Inadequate Leadership
Leaders who lack the will and/or skill needed to lead, model, and implement the change will inevitably hinder the ability to realize results.
Sound familiar? You have most likely experienced one or more failed change efforts in your career. If I asked you to reflect on those experiences, you would invariably be able to point to one or more of the above causes that undermined change. Yet these barriers to change can be seen and managed long before they undermine the business results your changes intend to make.
3 ways to determining how ready your organization is for change
In the near future, you will undoubtedly participate in or lead a change initiative. Are you ready to make it a success? When determining how ready your organization is for change, make sure you do three things.
1. Align on the case for change
Before you, or other leaders involved, can determine if your organization is ready for change, make sure all understand and are committed to the same changes.
2. Get reliable data about the buy-in for and impact of change
Use an approach that solicits from and/or captures input from all the leaders the change will impact. Make sure the approach is rigorous enough to surface multiple change levers and how they need to work interdependently. Ensure findings will highlight specific challenges or obstacles and ideas for how to overcome them.
The depth and breadth of how you understand change challenges will be the extent to which you create a sufficient plan for a successful change.
3. Create a robust change plan
Change efforts fail during implementation; success is predicated on your plan. Your plan must include all the work required to ensure specific outcomes connected to the change. Timelines and metrics associated with the work will help keep your change on track. Know the obstacles you face and plan to overcome them. Stack your transition team or the specific group of leaders tasked to implement the changes with key stakeholder, influencers, and in some cases, nay-sayers as a way to build buy-in for the change and belief in the organizations ability to pull it off.
Once a desired change has been articulated, one of the surest ways to know how ready an organization is for that change is to measure the organization’s readiness. Leaders responsible for the change need insights about challenges and obstacles to incorporate into a change plan before they launch. When we work with organizations in pursuit of transformational change (such as a change in strategic direction or a new organization design), we use a Change & Transition assessment to do just that. The leaders championing the change as well as the stakeholders who must execute it complete this assessment. In instances where broader views are needed, focus groups and other survey mechanisms are used to gather sufficient data and begin socializing change.
Strategies for change in an organization
Below is an illustrative example of Readiness findings from the Change & Transition Assessment. The data represents average scores. Dark green indicates a high degree of readiness, while red indicates a low degree of readiness.
Illustrative Change & Transition Readiness Assessment Findings
Based on this data, what will this organization need to do to increase its readiness for change and raise the odds of success?
Create greater understanding and commitment for the change with middle managers and those directly impacted by the change
Notice the difference of understanding and commitment between senior leadership (high) and middle managers (low). It’s the job of those leading change to learn why that’s the case and begin creating understanding and commitment broadly across the organization. If they do not, middle managers will either drag their feet and lobby against the change or minimally lack the understanding to know what they need to do differently to support it. This often causes a chain reaction where senior leaders get involved in day-to-day operations which further marginalizes middle managers and increases their cynicism about the future of meaningful change.
Get key influencers ‘off the fence’ and willing to cash in their social capital
Notice the difference between key stakeholders/influencers understanding (light green) and commitment (orange). This is an equally critical story for change leaders to learn from and rewrite. Leaders whose “social capital” allows them to cash in a, “Just trust me, you won’t be disappointed,” are also judicious about how they spend it. If they are unwilling to spend it, you need to know why and help them overcome it. Leaders with social capital are particularly important when leading change because they can help move individuals and groups with deep emotional connection to the way business used to be to see the potential of what the business can become.
Be clear about required change resources and careful not to “peanut butter” them across multiple efforts
Notice the resource discrepancy between quality (light green) and sufficiency (yellow). It would be easy to conclude, “We just don’t have enough.” However, there is more to the story than insufficiency. Notice the low degree of coordination between this change initiative and those that are already underway. The insufficiency is the result of a deeper systemic issue – one of prioritization. These change leaders must determine if a lack of prioritization and poorly allocated resources are diluting their investments in change. They may not need more resources, they may just need existing resources repositioned. If you frame the story ‘insufficient resources’ you’ll pass the hat in search of more. However, if you frame the challenge as, “We don’t say ‘no’, we just resource everything equally,” you’ll push the organization to rethink how it invests in change.
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