Organisations make a lot of change. Not all of it is successful change.
You’ll have read many times that the failure rate is 70%. (Got a few minutes? Try and find a reliable source for that figure. It’s not easy)
But I think I can say without fear of contradiction that many change programmes don’t succeed as well as was envisaged at the outset.
That can be for a variety of reasons. But one of the reasons they fail is a lack of feedback and measurement as the change is implemented. There’s often more talking than listening.
So why does change fail?
I did some research a while back and I can summarise the main reasons for change not taking hold:
Vision for Change: Without inspirational leadership, visible role models, and inclusive involvement in the creation and evolution of the change, initiatives falter. People need to be inspired and see their leaders actively driving the change.
Coherent Idea: Clear vision and steps are crucial. Ambiguity in messaging and lack of accountability at each stage lead to confusion and disengagement.
Programme of Change: Clear milestones and detailed plans between each step are necessary. Without them, there is no clear path to success and methods for execution remain undefined.
Reinforcing Change: Empowerment, regular communication, and recognition are key to embedding change. Without these, employees don't feel involved or appreciated, which hinders the change process.
Continued Momentum: Sustained energy and ongoing commitment are critical. If there is a perception that the change might just "go away," commitment levels will drop.
Fits your Situation: For change to be successful, it must be realistic and align with the ongoing direction of the organisation. If it doesn't appear to fit with existing initiatives or the overall strategy, it is likely to fail.
Appropriate to Culture: Change needs to feel natural and be supported by the team structure. If the culture is not conducive, and the right people are not involved, change initiatives struggle to take root.
Managerial Support: Managers need to support their staff through change. However, if managers themselves are unsupported, they cannot effectively mitigate stress and guide their teams through the transition.
Right Resources: Adequate tools, involvement of the right people, and proper training and coaching are essential. A lack of resources hinders the change process.
Right for People: Change should not overburden employees. Lack of support and failure to address stress can derail initiatives. Listening to employee concerns and providing support is vital.
It’s evident that there is plenty that can go wrong. It’s evident too that we’re thinking here about large-scale changes. Things where it takes time and more than one step to move between the now and the future state.
The right combination of these things needs to be in place to maintain the energy, to bring people back to the reasons to do this, to show them the better state as you begin to achieve it.
What do we mean by fail?
It’s important to think about our definition of failure.
Do we mean that we didn’t achieve everything that was set out in the original plan, down to every i-dot and t-cross? Because that might be a failure of the original idea.
If you don’t anticipate that things might not pan out exactly as you expected, then you should probably expect to fail.
That kind of precisely plottable path, and indeed of a top-down dictation of what will happen and when, just isn’t the reality of organisational life. It isn’t how life happens outside of work.
Change is fluid
If change is to happen it needs to be more fluid, and to involve people in the eventual outcomes. Which can sound like a recipe for chaos, or inaction, so it’s important to keep some kind of frame on what you’re looking to achieve
So that will mean that you are looking to ensure that any change has:
· Happened, at least close, to budget and timescales
· Achieved most of the original goals
· Realised most of the intended benefits
· Embedded within at least parts of the organisation
· Caused the least possible disruption
· Satisfied most of the stakeholders
It’s important not to get too hung up on absolutes. Accept at the outset that lines will be longer and wigglier than ideal; that the people involved may not respond in the ways you anticipate.
And it is important too to consider and capture the new and unseen benefits that arise as you start to unroll change, and start to let people have their say in its eventual outcome.
What’s missing is the measurement
This is what has been coming out in various conversations I’ve been having. There is a lot of ambition for change. There is a lot of communication about, or intending to drive, change. But too much of that communication is directional, it’s one-way. And it’s not designed to work out how well change is landing or working.
Take a couple of the reasons for change failure
Coherent Idea: Clear vision and steps are crucial. Ambiguity in messaging and lack of accountability at each stage lead to confusion and disengagement.
When change is first announced – or people are first invited to contribute to change – then there may well be some assessment or measurement of whether people are bought in.
Does that continue to happen? Is there a method to see if people still recall the motivation, and how strong their belief remains? Insight here can be invaluable in how you need to engage to maintain your drive.
Right Resources: Adequate tools, involvement of the right people, and proper training and coaching are essential. A lack of resources cripples the change process.
A different scenario, a different outcome – an ongoing assessment of whether people have what they need to actually make this happen. It’s probable this is known at a local level – is it then collated at an organisational level so that bigger decisions and corrections can be made?
What measures do we want to make?
I tend to think of this in four levels, and you need to pass each level before you can hope to access the next:
1. Receive
2. Understand
3. Believe
4. Act
And as much as possible, and certainly the further we go up these levels, we’re looking less for evidence of what people say, and much more about what people do.
Looking at each in turn…
1. Receive
Still where comms measurement can often stop: do people have the information? Where we have digital channels – we can tell more: do they click, do they always click, how long or often do they engage for?
2. Understand
We can ask questions about understanding; we can ask if they see the importance of what’s happening. But as valuable will be the level of feedback and questions that come more organically i.e. we can see whether we have yet inspired people to WANT to understand?
3. Believe
Again, we’d probably want to ask some direct questions, but we’d also want to monitor actions too.
Do we start to see people doing different things? Are they using new tools or methods? Are they making the right requests to change how they operate? Are the right conversations happening between teams?
4. Act
Now, much less on what people say and far more on the organisational effects.
Is this having the intended effect? Or can at least we see the precursors of effects? Say if you want to increase sales, are you yet seeing more leads, are we seeing more inbound enquiries? If you want to improve productivity, are we starting to see stages of projects moving more quickly?
The right measures will be different for each project. But if you need this change to stick, then you need to keep having the right conversations. And if you need to have the right conversations, then you need to know the relevant subject. In terms of your objectives, and in terms of how your people are feeling.
That can only be done with a robust and deliberate measurement strategy.
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