Why is managing change so difficult? What are the biggest causes for derailment of change exercises? Can telling stories tame the change monster in organizations?
Three managers walk out of a conference room and as they approach the coffee machine in the corner of the hallway, one of them says “I just don’t understand what the fuss is all about; we are doing just fine. Why do we need to overhaul the process that was put in place less than 3 years ago?” The other manager replies “And this too will go the same way as Project Phoenix went last year. Whenever external consultants are brought in, things just become more complicated and stop working”.
Do these conversations sound familiar? Have you heard them in your organization? If not, yours must be a very unique organization. The McKinsey paper “The Inconvenient Truth About Change Management” reported that studies from 1995 to 2008 have shown that about 70 percent of all business transformations fail. Last year, Forbes magazine put the failure rate of technology-based transformation at 84 percent.
So why is managing change so difficult? A common thread across studies is that a lack of communication clarity is one of the key issues that drive down chances of success of managing change. And this has two distinct parts – failure to explain the need for change, and the failure to tackle anti-stories.
Most change communication glosses over the ‘why’ of the need for change and it’s almost a taboo to talk about broken processes. While a majority of the communication is focused on the ‘what’ — what are we going to do, who will be responsible and by when will it be delivered.
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