Changes require a healthy does of planning and project management, especially if the change is large or will be deployed over a long period of time. As a result the project management aspects of change results in scope, schedule and budget being determined up front. And then once implemented the approach to managing change is typically “Schedule is King”. This may be okay if the scope, impact and disruption of the change is fully understood, but all too often it’s not. Changes are implemented too quickly and then managed and KPI’s are benchmarked against the schedule.

However there is so much more than managing the schedule to ensure successful change. Other factors need to be considered such do people know how to change, do they all understand the business reasons for change, do they have the skills and knowledge to go adopt the change, do the people impacted have a say in how the change is implemented, are the necessary feedback loops in place to identify issues that need to be addressed?

It’s crucial that not only the process implications are considered but also the people side Click To Tweet

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John Kotter’s well known and respected 8-step model to leading change begins with creating a sense of urgency. This is about communicating the importance of acting immediately and motivating people to adopt the change now. However this step when misunderstood and mis-implemented can do the very opposite of ensuring the necessary engagement is obtained and change success is achieved on time or ahead of schedule.

Creating a sense of urgency is often misused to rush projects when they haven’t been properly planned or scoped, impacts are not fully known, or realistic timelines are compressed to an unrealistic “urgent” end point. The risk of doing this is many fold

• Poor implementation resulting in do-overs
• Partial solutions that don’t full work
• Decreased morale
• Increased resistance
• Loss of leadership credibility

Creating a sense of urgency is often misused to rush projects Click To Tweet

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A recent survey by McKingsey & Company of over 5000 projects highlighted the high failure rate of change projects, with over half providing less value than expected and almost 1 in 5 failing so badly that the companies very survival was at risk! With such poor track records on delivering successful outcomes, its’ not wonder executives and change sponsors approach change with fear and trepidation. Yet they are ways to ensure your change project doesn’t end up as yet another change failure  statistic.

The truth is every change project fails to some degree at a “micro” level. That doesn’t mean the project as a whole is a failure as it could be delivered on time, under budget and with better than expected outcomes. But it may fail during its implementation. Failure can come in many forms such as poor communication leading to higher than necessary resistance, poor planning leading to unintended consequences that required extra resource and time to rectify or failure to build awareness and desire in those impacted by the change resulting in poor utilization of provided training. And that’s just to name a couple of the many ways change can fail at the micro level.

The one key to avoid change failure leading to change failure Click To Tweet

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We’ve all faced conversations we don’t looking forward and that make us nervous such as presenting in front of the board or senior management, having to have a conversation that you know will lead to certain conflict or giving someone bad news. And we experience those conversations as difficult because we’ve already perceived them to be.

 

So we walk into those conversations with our filter of “this is going to be hard” up and our mind is a powerful thing in that it deletes and distorts our perceptions of things without us knowing it. So because we have gone in expecting difficulty our brain is actually looking for evidence to reinforce and validate this expectation, and low and behold it generally finds it. So more often th20an not we walk away with the perception that the conversation was difficult as expected.

 

How to make those difficult conversations easier and less stressful. Click To Tweet

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Getting people to buy into and adapt new behaviors and attitudes can be at difficult at best, and almost impossible at times. One of the most common complaints from managers and leaders is that they struggle to get the people they are responsible for to be open to, and embrace, change. Most leader’s experience of implementing change is dragging people forward whilst they complain, kick and scream about wanting to maintain the status quo.

Not everyone embrace change the same. One person may be open to it, whilst another is openly against it all costs. And why the difference? There are too many reasons to explain here, so I will quickly cover one of the main ones. And that is everyone is motivated differently and hence embraces the change differently. For some change actually motivates them, whilst for others it de-motivates them. For example some people are motivated by certainty and security so just hearing the word ‘change’ sends them running in the opposite direction. Others are motivated by rapport and good team dynamics so depending upon if the change threatens this or improves it, will determine how they respond, whether against or for the change.  Yet others are motivated by working in processes that are well defined and implemented, so if they change fixes a problem with a broken process they would be more than willing to embrace the change.

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