Change Management - Why the High Failure Rate?
70% of all change programs in business fail to achieve what they were
designed to do. In some cases they cause complete business failure!
Change Management is the buzz word of business the world
over.
Change may refer to a simple product change, a system
change, a change in IT methodologies. Or it may be a company wide all
encompassing clean sweep where the entire company is revitalized. This
drastic step is usually taken when the company is on the verge of collapse,
or when a new CEO comes in wanting to bring the business in line with his or
her experience.
Being a Project Manager does not make you a good Change
Manager. Being able to structure a Gantt or Pert Chart and rolling out the
technical aspects of a change, without taking into account the intense
reactivity of staff and management is almost certain to either create a
business meltdown, of a change in function that does not endure.
It is absolutely critical that a Change Manager
understands the subtleness of how different people think and feel and be
able to integrate the varying values systems of the stakeholders with the
desired outcome. Conflicts between management staff and between line staff
must be dealt with and the desired objectives MUST be CLEARLY communicated
to everyone involved in terms of what the participant is going to gain out
the change.
Change will always create anxieties in the people
involved. Often there is excitement from those who drive the change, but
caution or resistance from those who perceives a potential threat. That
threat can be from their perception of their ability to absorb the changes
and learn new skills. A threat can also come from fear of job change or from
the possibility of losing their job altogether. No matter where the threat
comes from, it is a powerfully destabilizing force and has been known to
destroy companies when poorly handled.
The stress that change generates can also have undesirable
results from ill health or absenteeism in people who are already stressed
and cannot cope with the extra loads a change program puts on them. When
people feel high levels of stress, they either fall ill, or jump ship.
Either way, this causes additional unwanted loads on management staff,
distracting management from the task at hand and increasing the risk of
failure of the project. Remember the old saying - "When you are up to your
knees in alligators it's hard to remember that the original exercise was to
drain the swamp!"
This is why corporate change projects fail two out of
every three times, with huge resultant cost in money and human misery. So if
you are selecting a Change Manager, make sure he / she knows how to handle
the human factor.
Back to "Handling Change
in Organisations"
