Corporations Addicted to Change Management
Aim for Continuous Business Improvement Instead of Sweeping Changes
Sep 11, 2009
Corporations are addicted to change management programs that use up a tremendous amount of resources but never resolve the problems they set out to address, says Fiona MacLeod, president of BP Convenience Retail USA & Latin America. She was speaking at the recent Wharton Leadership Conference, held annually at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
"What really struck me is why so many of these change management programs fail," MacLeod said. Companies will implement new change initiatives within one or two years, sometimes without allowing the original program to complete.
MacLeod compared this kind of practice to dieters who gain and lose the same weight over and over again because they fail to learn proper eating habits or understand the underlying issues of their weight gain.
Change Management Systems Must Be Sustainable
Sustainability is “absolutely crucial” to change management programs, says MacLeod, and that most business improvement strategies fail for many reasons. She cites three of the main reasons for failure:
- A new company leader wants to make “a big splash” but doesn’t follow through to keep the program on track
- Employees fall back into old habits because they haven’t been giving the tools or training to understand and implement the new approach.
- Companies who hire external consultants to implement change strategies often fail to take ownership of the strategy.
"As business leaders, we're very good at the rational part" of change: Identifying what's wrong and how to fix it,” MacLeod told the gathering. “But the soft side of change management- in terms of really engaging people- is just as important. If people get it intellectually but don't get it emotionally, I don't believe the change will be sustained."
Change Management Programs Must Engage Leaders and Employees
MacLeod said corporate leaders need to engage employees by showing where the problems lie and how they will be fixed. “People need to have a sense of what the future looks like, so be very clear on that," she said.
The same holds true for company leaders, MacLeod points out. Just because they are leaders doesn’t mean that they will “get it”, she said. “We need to take probably 10 times as long in engaging, empowering and educating our leaders than we actually think we do."
MacLeod also urged the managers to avoid the “big splash” change objectives and instead focus on "everyday performance improvement". Make "heroes of our day-to-day deliverers…reward people on how they treat the customer, how they make decisions, how they simplify the business,” MacLeod said. If people are “uncertain and they don't feel respected, the change will never stick."
Break the Change Management Addiction Cycle
"It's very easy to get addicted to the change pattern by not getting the change right in the first place,” MacLeod says. By “not making the tough calls or bold decisions up-front, maybe going for something half-way, and then allowing things to slip back."
It’s up to corporate leaders to break the change management addiction cycle, MacLeod concludes. "The economy needs businesses that are clear on why they exist, clear on what their business model is, and have measures in place to know when they need to make adjustments. We need organizations that can manage continuous improvement in a predictable way."
Source: A Change Agent Sees Change 'Addiction'
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