A couple of reasons why change projects fail

Chris Argyris, one of my favourite management writers, says that one of the main reasons change programmes fail is because of a different understanding about the objectives/outcomes between the stakeholders/sponsors and those tasked with managing and delivering the change.

My own experience adds another reason; I use a cultural survey that allows people in an organisation to identify where the culture is now and where they want it to be. Whilst there is often agreement throughout the organisation about the destination, there is often a completely differing interpretation of the current culture. Directors and senior management often have a rose tinted view of the current reality.

What hope is there for a change project if people are starting from different places?

Finally, just as psychology and science are having to re-invent themselves to take into account human consciousness, so consultants specialising in organisational transformation are having to move away from processes that focus on performance and start paying more attention to the human dimension.

To take just one example, think about the organisations that championed business process re-engineering (BPR). In the words of Michael Hammer, who was one of the leaders in the field, BPR was “the radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed.”

Inevitably, in such a culture, personal fulfilment, creativity and output decline. The irony is that it creates a vicious cycle; the most able people refused to accept the stress associated with working in such a culture and left to work in a more pleasant environment,leaving their original organisation even more denuded of motivated, capable people. As Arie de Geus writes in The Living Company, (HBS Press, 1997,) “Organizations die….. because their managers…….forget that their organization’s true nature is that of a community of humans.”

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