There is a common story that gets told in business that people resist change. Perhaps that is inaccurate. What if I told you we were going to double your pay, double your vacation, and give you the responsibilities that you wanted at work? Would that change work for you? Perhaps people don’t resist change. They just don’t embrace change that is threatening or uncertain.
In today’s business environment, there is no shortage of change. There is a lot of talk about being agile and flexible in all functions and industries. The talk of disruption that is taking place all over our lives is really a disruption of how it was and in order to be successful, businesses have to find ways to go from the way it was to the way it is now.
Take Mergers and Acquisitions. Aetna & CVS, AT&T and Time Warner, Walt Disney, and Fox just to mention a few, are all combining and that means the people in these companies will go through change. As pervasive as the need for effective change might be, 70% of change initiatives fail, or worse, create a new set of problems.
There are also many business model changes underway all the time. Some industries are consolidating while others are now deregulated. Managing change quickly and effectively is a competency that has become an everyday imperative for success in the marketplace.
So, how do we enable successful change? How do we mobilize an organization for improved performance while implementing new changes? How do we get that new future state to be one for people that is desirable and inspiring and worth making?
Here are some secrets to success for implementing large-scale change:
- Orient people to the new future and unglue them from the past.
- Focus on producing new, unprecedented results, while you are building capabilities.
- Minimize disruption while enhancing productivity.
- Resolve problems and interruptions with velocity.
- Develop people’s skills and competencies relevant to the new model.
- Create a platform to support future change.
- Create a sense of purpose and accomplishment during all phases of the change process.
So, when your odds of success are not high in large-scale change, it is all about finding new ways to think and act that make for a winning ticket!
