What Makes a Successful Change?

A shocking 70% of change initiatives fail.  It’s a large number and the costs associated with it, even bigger.  So why does it happen? Why, with a detailed vision, plan and specialist change team do so many change initiatives fail? One of the largest drivers is people across the organisation and how well they have been engaged in the change that’s happening.

The people in your organisation are the key to making sustainable small changes up to large scale business transformations. It’s essential to get your people engaged and understanding the What, Why, When, How and most importantly ‘what it all means for me’.  If you can do this and do it well your people will be ready to help, accept, adopt and drive the change, and you won’t become another statistic.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – a phrase originated by Peter Druker and made famous by Mark Fields at Ford.  It’s very true, but you can also add “Culture eats change for breakfast” too.

Simply communicating a change will not improve the likelihood of success. People who are culturally aligned to their company’s strategy and value, help to deliver effective change and achieve better results. In fact, a business whose culture is both inclusive and progressive can often find that change is not only welcomed, it is driven by their people. Business culture needs to be at the top of the leadership agenda and be the starting point for all change journeys. You wouldn’t start a project without having the correct skilled resource in place. Going forward you need to consider whether you have the right culture, communications and engagement plan too.