Achilles’s Heel in Change Management

Change is inevitable, and the speed of changes is increasing at today’s “VUCA” digital business environment. Change also becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations because it is treated as something distinct from running the business, evolving and increasing results over time. Leaders and employees are stressed enough in getting done what is right in front of them that change is layered upon becomes disruptive. The Change Management failure rate is stubbornly high -more than two-thirds of Change Management effort fail to achieve the expected result statistically. So how to improve leadership effectiveness and business agility via understanding Achilles’s Heel in Change Management?
Under-communication: Unclear communication for vision, goals, the need for change, benefits of change and each one's role in the change is a huge mistake. It is important to keep the communications open, as well as keeping people focused on things they can control. Change needs to have reasons: Remember no one like change, or more precisely “being changed,” especially when one can not identify the justification for the change. In today's work environment. It takes a lot of energy to break old habits and outdated thought processes. Too often organizations do a great job of sending out their message that supports the change yet they fail to ever take in any feedback, though. We are human beings interacting with other human beings. A business decision is made via people interaction. People don't fear change; they fear loss. Without information about the change, they make up their own stories. People may not care what you want until they understand WHY. To overcome indifference, clarify the purpose of change, win support for your ideas, reduce the risk for the decision maker. It is challenging to overcome silo mentality, get out of comfort zone, change can not be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into the collective mentality, process, communication of the organization and action. Successful change and transformations require leaders to over-communicate the transformation vision, frame the right problems and solve them effectively.
Miss the opportunity to build the change momentum: There are two mistakes that people make when changing strategy. They change it too soon, or they change it too late. Delaying changes can cause lots of unnecessary pains or turn a minor issue into a fatal problem. Changing too slowly will also stifle strategy execution and business growth. Change too fast perhaps has difficulty in sustaining the result - only change behaviors manually, not change mindset behind it. Change occurs at the level of the individual and it is only when the majority of people are on the journey that the real results start to emerge. Major changes in an organization can have unforeseen consequences that could negatively impact the company. Change has to be orchestrated at all levels with the right timing because strategy management and change management need to go hand-in-hand in a timely manner.
Top-down single directional approach: That means the executives formulate a plan or strategy and drive it through the organization assuming that the organization will accept it. It is commonly noted that most of the 'top-down' driven programs are unsuccessful as they fail to enthuse functional stakeholders. Sometimes Senior executives can be blinded by their previous success and lulled into a false sense of security that success sometimes brings. Such pitfalls are especially dangerous for the large legacy organizations that had a fairly long-running history of success and growth. That past success obfuscated a need for a change in strategic direction at a critical point in time.  Employees Buy-in is critical. The most challenging aspect of any change management plan is to gain engagement to the whole workforce. Motivation is right following inspiration. Disregarding motivation will push resistance to very high level and performance on the lowest; therefore, you won't be able to change. And now, social and enterprise collaboration tools do provide effective and interesting multichannel digital communication platforms to make change management more tangible and measurable.
Change Management turns to be more complex, be cautious about the Achilles’ Heel in change management. Change can not be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization, build as an ongoing business capability, and master change as a business continuum.


Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu