A Lack of Surprise

If people believe that existing approaches to business change have little chance of success, then maybe we should do it differently. Luckily, that is increasingly possible...

As you might imagine, I have had quite a few conversations with people over the past few days about the results of our recent survey on factors governing change. The most striking thing about these discussions is the lack of surprise at the result; in particular the first result of the survey: in the experience of more than half of those surveyed, 25% or fewer change projects have succeeded - and, for more than 80% of those surveyed, no more than 50% of projects succeeded.

In other words, most people think that most change projects fail, and four of five people rate a change project's chance of success as no more than the 50/50.

On these numbers, why would anyone embark on a change initiative? Someone wanting to lose a lot of money, obviously. And lose it they do. Billions are spent on change programmes around the World every year, and on this estimate, they'd be no worse off putting the same money on the black numbers at a roulette table...

But as my friend Steve White has always pointed out to me: "If what you are doing isn't working, try something else instead - for if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." (He's a very smart boy - see his article here for the sanest description of ITIL I've ever seen).

But the problem for most of people is that there is no alternative. Sure there are change methods and practices: ADKAR, Prosci, Kotter and many others that people will sell you: more than 90% of members of the UK's Management Consultancies Association, for example, profess expertise in change management.

So what happens when we next need to implement a change initiative? We continue with the routine, don't we? Formal project management, communication plans, stakeholder maps, workshops to secure 'buy-in', sponsor workshops, kick-offs, early training as part of the 'hearts and minds' engagement and so forth.

Knowing in our hearts, as our survey respondents know, that most of our efforts are doomed to failure, but hoping, this time, it will be different...

The problem is analogous to the days when the formal requirements-led 'waterfall' approach was the only method available to defining and developing new IT systems. People tried to put some structure to it: SSADM, Jackson structured programming, OOP and so forth - but no matter what anyone did, most software projects ran late, over budget and compromised on functionality. But still we carried on, because no-one could think of an alternative. Gradually, however, a few mavericks started using alternatives: SCRUM, eXtreme Programming (XP), hothousing, and the range of techniques that now come under the umbrella term 'Agile', which an increasing number of people are using.

These new ways became possible because the pioneers reframed the fundamental question of software development from "How do we organise ourselves to deliver software to meet a set of requirements?" to "How do we best quickly produce code people can use, so that we can get feedback and iterate fast to get it closer to what our customers want?"

We need to do the same thing with Change: we need to reframe the basic question from "How we overcome resistance to change?" to "How do we quickly make it easy for people to work in the new ways we need?" Phrased this way, the business of change is not about resistance or engagement, nor about overcoming barriers; it's about rapidly adjusting the work environment so that the new way of working is the easiest, has the least ambiguity, is rewarded, is noticed, and is understood.

And that is a very different game. Of course, I'm biased: it's the game we play at Bloomstorm, and it's one that works.

It's also a lot more fun to do.

Mike

(Photo Credit Michal Zacharzewski, SXC)