Many transformations and projects fail. One reason is a disconnect between management and impacted stakeholders. Management is unfortunately often oblivious to it.
The good news is that this can be improved, by taking a step back, and demonstrating empathy and perseverance.
All starts well. An idea is developed and matured. There is a good level of consensus. The initiative is finally ready and approved. Then the initiative is launched, and it is experiencing ‘resistance to change’. There are often two key disconnects.
First, management fails to recognise that during the project construction and approval, they had the opportunity to go through the usual and necessary change cycle, and that it is only fair and necessary to give time to all other parties to embrace the new initiative and make it theirs.
Second, management fails to recognise that most employees, being middle management or individual contributors, have very different motivations than they do. In practice, very few employees wake up in the morning to ‘improve the company’s margin’. Most employees give much more importance to social relationships, their daily work environment and content, and purpose.
So, what can be done?
Simply all initiatives should integrate key stakeholders and their points of view as early as possible and integrate change as a core component. This can take the form of:
1. Identify, engage, and integrate representatives of stakeholders early on.
2. Adapt the initiative to ensure that stakeholders benefit from the initiative (as viewed from their eyes and motivations), and address the “what is it from me”.
3. Over-communicate the vision and intent, to inspire (why we do it), create visibility (what will happen), and reassure (what it is not).
4. Plan proper time for all parties to integrate and make the project their own.
5. Invest adequate time and money in change management.
One question I love to ask is “do you have a change management plan?”. If the response is no, this will likely trigger a discussion about what can we do. If yes, I follow up with “what percentage of your project budget is allocated to change?”. With a few exceptions, this creates some unease as the number is non-existent or shamefully low. Thus, also triggering a discussion on what can be improved. Then there are the initiatives that include a strong change management spirit or stream. Kudos to them.
The cost of not managing change properly far outstrips the cost of failure. So, what are we waiting for …
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