Why Change Fails
John Kotter, perhaps the leading expert on organizational change, has a new article in Harvard Business Journal. If your familiar with Kotter's work, he has articulated an eight step process for transforming the organization. In this article, he highlights the key errors leaders make. His article follows his model ranking the order of errors in a linear manner in line with what he teaches, but I found myself asking the question which of these are the common errors. If I had to pick three I see the most, which three woudl it be. First, here are the errors:
Error 1 - Not establising a great sense of urgency.
This happens alot in companies. Someone knows we should make a change, but they don't communicate the whys of it to masses. It results in a top down approach. Just DO IT. Never really works very well. But many times, changes come late in the game. Most of the organization knows there are changes needed. So this one might not make my top 3.
Error 2 - Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition
This may be my favorite for the most often made mistake. Oh, leaders create guiding coalitions, they just rarely use the right criteria for who should be on them. The real leaders, movers and shakers are often not picked. I have heard lots of reasons. Here are two of the most common: "We need all divisions, units represented." or "You always pick the same people." The last one is a tough one, but the truth is, every organization has a group of informal leaders in the masses.. and they are the key to successful change.
Error 3 - Lacking Vision
This is not the case very often. I have found that lots of organizations work hard to figure out what changes to make. The problem isn't that they don't have a vision.. the problem is often.. well Kotter's Error 4..
Error 4 - Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of Ten.
This is a biggy - Enough Said. or maybe not said :)
Error 5 - Removing Obstacles
This one often takes courage. The obtacle could be a person in the leadership or it could be the organizational strucuture. But leaders have to step up here. Often personal risk becomes the limiting factor.
Error 6 - Not Systmatically Planning for, and Creating Short-Term wins
I like this one. This is maybe the best part of leading change. When you get that short team (meanginful) win.. well you know things are going to happen. I don't think this is a biggy. Given the mood of business today.. Want it now! Fast.. Most leaders have a short term goal mentality.
Error 7 - Declaring Victory Too Soon
We have an expectation that change happens fast (Thank you Gladwell). And maybe the moment we recognize change makes us feel it happens fast, but large scale organizational change happens over a long period of many years. Large ships do not turn on a dime and if they try.. well.. it is not very dry on board. or safe.
Error 8 - Not anchoring changes in the corporation culture
I am not sure of how well we do on this one. I think once you get to this level, most often, your on the down hill. For example, back in the late 80s, I helped my own organization adopt e-mail and technology. Once we had made the change, 95% of our leaders read their own mail. We were able to tell everyone how much money we were saving and that we were communicating more frequently. It became an expectation that everyone hired will read their own e-mail. We hired administrators from other land grants.. they all came in and were expected to read their own e-mail. What anchored this.. A top leader who said, if you don't read your e-mail and I send you a request, you will be held accountable. This be came our culture.
So what is the bottom line. If I were to pick the most common ones.. It would be 2,4 & 5. You might pick others and they are all important, but I think my three are where we trip ourselves into failure.
Posted at 06:35AM Feb 22, 2007 by mowen in General |