Mind the gap – closing the change management gap
A study carried out by IBM in 2009 on “Making Change Work” included the results of a survey from 1,500 Change Practitioners worldwide, the results were staggering.
The change practitioners themselves reported the following change program success rates:
- 41% – Fully met objectives
- 44% – Missed at least one objective
- 15% – Missed all objectives or aborted
In all, 59% of change initiatives failed to meet their objectives.
The question at the forefront of businesses today when faced with facts and figures such as those is how do we avoid change management failure? What are some of the common challenges? Why is there this “change gap” between success and failure?
In today’s dynamic work environment there are multiple enablers and accelerators of change, whether it is technology advances, complex multi-national organisations, the impact of globalisation or a challenging economic situation, businesses are required to re-frame their view of “normal”.
Leaders are confronted with an increasing rate of change and complexity and need to find ways to deal with it. Leading companies through change has become different from how it was ten to twenty years ago. And it is not going to slow down – on the contrary!
For businesses to prosper, thrive and lead they will need to breakaway from expecting the day-to-day operations to continuously fall into a static and predictable pattern that may include short periods of change. The new normal is continuous change, not the absence of change. Businesses that embrace this “new norm” will move from merely responding to trends, to shaping them and leading them.
There is no single answer to delivering successful change, but there are clear steps that businesses can take to reduce and eventually eradicate the change gap between the failures and the successes. Businesses can no longer afford an ad-hoc approach to change management.
There is now a turning point in change management, where it needs to move from an ad-hoc, sporadic and reactive approach to a systematic approach based on intelligence and insight into what works and what does not, the application of better skills and a culture that embraces change as the new norm.
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing – R.D Laing
Short URL & Title:
Mind the gap – closing the change management gap — http://www.torbenrick.eu/t/r/pay
Latest posts by Torben Rick (see all)
- Measuring organisational alignment – You get what you measure – May 25, 2013
- Will virtual stores disrupt traditional bricks and mortar – May 23, 2013
- The broadcast era has changed – social media is forcing transparency – May 20, 2013
