Does change management need to change?

Change management has become an industry in its own right, and something the ‘popular’ kids (big corporate companies) talk about implementing on a weekly, if not daily basis. Yet, somewhat surprisingly 60%-70% of organisational change projects end in failure. An article written recently in the Harvard Business Review talks about the reasons behind the poor statistic.
Change management, and large scale transformation has become increasingly popular and high profile in the public and not-for-profit sectors. The challenges these industries face are not too dissimilar to those the commercial world are currently facing, or the challenges they were facing 5-10 years ago. The pressure is to become more commercial and keep up with the ever changing business world.
As someone who isn’t a change management professional, but someone who does recruit for these programmes; I have seen a few common themes where programmes have failed, stalled or collapsed. Normally for one of these three reasons:
  • The organisation isn’t ready to embrace change
  • The organisation has never had the need to change, and long-serving, loyal employees feel the change is going to leave them out of a job, or with a role that isn’t as important
  • The senior leadership team wants the change to happen but shows little, if any support until the programme is close to failure
Most organisations don’t have the skills in-house to completely deliver large scale change so the use of the Big 4, niche consultancies or high-flying independent consultants is common. They all have a time and place and can be equally effective but the key to success is good communication. Determining what, when, why and how could make the difference between your change programme being a success or failure.

Interim resources required

I normally get a call when a programme is failing, or when the Big 4 have finished their advisory work and organisations want to use interim resource to deliver and execute their change programmes. I provide senior interims to shape scope and fix business critical issues or improvements that are high up on the board, or trustees’ agenda.
I have the capacity and network to help my clients at short notice with high quality consultants either as a one man band or an entire programme team.
Want to find out more? Please get in touch:
T: +44 20 7269 2433