According to John Kotter there are many reasons change initiatives fail especially in large organizations. The number one reason is there is not a clear sense of urgency for change that makes everyone willing to pay the short term price of pain due to change to gain the long term benefit of progress.
Many times the communications part of the process breaks down and the implementers do not get enough information to really buy in. The importance of creating short term wins for establishing credibility for the entire process cannot be overstated.
When the new of change becomes the norm there are several key factors that let you know it is now firmly in the D.N.A. of your organizational culture:
- More change, not less: The guiding coalition uses the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle additional and bigger change projects.
- More help: Additional people are brought in, promoted, and developed to help with all the changes.
- Leadership from senior management: Senior people focus on maintaining clarity of shared purpose for the overall effort and keeping urgency levels up.
- Project management and leadership from below: Lower ranks in the hierarchy both provide leadership and specific projects and manage those projects.
- Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies: To make change easier in both the short and long term, managers identify unnecessary interdependencies and eliminate them.
When everyone in the organization starts to articulate the new vision in their own words as if it were their idea then you know they own the process. It is time to start looking for what needs to be changed next, the process never stops.
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