Seven In Ten Change Management Initiatives Fail - Four Ways To Not Be One Of Them

Organizations often fail to realize the impact of change on the employees it will affect, and do not plan and execute carefully enough to address the people issues through all phases of business process change management, says Forrester Anayst Claire Schooley. Four ways to make your change management efforts work.

Seven in ten - seventy percent of change management initiatives - a dramatically high rate of failure. It could happen to you unless you take into account that any business process change is strongly related to personal change — that means your people — and this is often the component that gets shortchanged.

Organizations fail to realize the impact of change on the employees it will affect and do not plan and execute carefully enough to address the people issues through all phases of business process change management. Today’s business environment is constantly changing as companies work to stay competitive. But change only happens when workers change their thinking, beliefs, and behaviors. This is hard and requires constant effort from employees and executives.

Change management methodologies abound. Look carefully at ADKAR from Prosci and John Kotter’s The 8-Step Process for Leading Change; read Crucial Conversations by Patterson et al. They are rich in change theory and suggestions. Choose one methodology or components of many methodologies. What’s critical is that you do not miss any of the following six principles:

The change manager (managing the people change) and the project manager (managing the technology change) must plan together; they work in parallel but have constant interaction to make sure the initiative is moving ahead on both fronts.

To make your change management efforts work, follow these best practices:

• Get project sponsorship from a leader who understands people change management.
• Make sure you have the change management resources and a budget.
• Communicate constantly with employees by engaging them in discussions and keeping them informed.
• Embed change principles in all business process improvement efforts both big and small.

Editor's note: This article was a post on Claire Schooley's Forrester Blog. It has been reprinted here with permission.

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