Are You Wasting Time and Money on Change Initiatives?

by Eric Britten

Lately I have been thinking about change initiatives I have been involved in over the past years. They cover a broad spectrum; strategic and tactical planning, process improvement, integrated annual planning cycles, organizational alignment, leadership, communications planning and performance management are just some of them. How many of these types of activities have you or your organization engaged in? If you're doing the same as most businesses, you've engaged in some of these or all of these activities.

How effective have those efforts been? Are the plans and changes put in place still there and working well? Or, like many organizations, do you look back at those hopeful initiatives and wonder why anyone ever thought things would change - because you're right back operating as if those efforts had never taken place?

To those of you who instituted sustainable change and are reaping the benefits from your initiatives, congratulations for a job well done. Keep up the good work. And to those of you who wonder why all the good hard work put into your initiatives yielded little or no sustainable returns, I have two questions.

Question one. Was your change effort visibly, effectively and unequivocably led and supported by senior management throughout the rollout, planning, implementation and followup?

Question two. (This is really the point of this posting.) Is or was the culture of your organization a strategic one that traditionally embraced and rewarded change, innovation, risk taking, collaborative leadership, new ways of doing things and accountability? Or was there a tactical culture in place that pretty much reinforced making "safe" decisions, sticking to tried and true processes, authoratative leadership, relying upon the gut feelings of those who had been around for a while, and often accepting excuses instead of results?

When it comes to instituting sustainable change, organizations with the more progressive and strategic cultures have a huge leg up over those who do not. Culture and behavior have major effects on the ability of an organization to change. This does not mean that only more progressive and strategic companies should attempt change nor that only they can do it. What it does mean is that before attempting any sort of major change within an organization, it is important to assess the capacity and capability for change within that organization. The results of the assessment can then become important factors in determining how change needs to be approached when designing the initiative or project. Skipping that step can jeopardize both success and sustainability.