Change Management Obstacles
So often, the potential transformative effects of change-management within an organization lack the support of participative-leaders and often make use of inappropriate resources. One of the major obstacles affecting unsuccessful ‘change-programs’ within any organization, is paying for the wrong service-provider to parachute-in and conduct the ‘program’.
Compounding this is the expectation they will do everything for you. Picking the wrong service-provider and turning your back on your responsibility for affecting change will ensure your attempts at change within your organization will be added to the long list of failures and wasted-investments.
We were recently asked to take responsibility for a ‘change-program’. Unfortunately there was no sense of continuous implementation, no sense of this being driven first and foremost by change in the owner of the business or his senior management team. They felt no responsibility for the current culture and had no sense of the need for them to lead and encourage habit-changes. There is little point in out-sourcing analysis and intervention without a commitment to purposeful implementation where the aim is to create new habits and recalibrate organizational culture.
Another client recently complained about experts who had no concept of the society within which his organization operated. He was talking about a situation where individuals from a company based in Europe, working in the GCC for the first time, had managed to miss-hit with their intervention given their lack of understanding of the mixed cultural backgrounds of his employees and the world they lived in.
Wherever possible, make use of service-providers who are conscious of the need to modify approaches based on national, expatriate, market, industry and company cultures. Those working in the GCC are very aware of this vital aspect of consulting, coaching and training in the region.
Most important is the attitude of the owners and senior team, recognizing change-management is not just training and communications but is a fundamental shift in how things are done around the organization, from top to bottom, anchored in the society where the company is based. Building this buy-in for change-management in organizations is vital to give all the efforts a chance for success.
When the right resources and service-providers have been deployed, with support from the top and a holistic sustainable-implementation approach is taken, project-by-project successes begin to have an effect on the organization.
Change-management is most successful when it is integrated in the organization and not seen as a separate process. Change should be driven into all activities and processes, how people use time and how employees think and feel; their behavior. The key senior personnel in the organization have to be ready to take a structured and intentional approach to effecting change; an organizational maturity often missing.
Many passionate change-management practitioners struggle with trying to convince owners and senior management teams. Once agreed, the next challenge is lack of enthusiastic, or even non-existent or wavering, support for the approach to improve performance through change-management. Assuming positive support from the top has been created, there is then often a lack of effective methodology without a focus on creating effective alignment delivering the desired synergy.
Other obstacles which will need addressing in any attempts to create effective change within an organization are: individuals’ negative predisposition towards change caused by fear of the unknown and anxiety about job security; invariably this leads to challenges in process, motive and values trust between people; nobody likes losing control, be it real or perceived.
Typically people will initially not be rational or logical when facing change-management initiatives. Their first reaction will almost certainly be overwhelmingly emotional. Although feeling a sense of relief (‘at least I now know what is happening’), they will experience shock and surprise given they have to go through change.
There will then be anger directed at senior people within the company and also at any other employees who might be perceived to be benefiting, which is often followed by a mixture of denial, blame, resentment, intransigence and frustration, leading to possible apathy, inertia and possibly depression. Self-confidence can take a terrible hit.
People will begin to accept change is going to happen but will want to find some control; a sense of bargaining for some ‘wins’ for the individual, leading to experimentation over whether these changes might actually be beneficial. This experimentation can then lead to optimism and enthusiasm, indicating an acceptance of changes, bringing new behaviors and ultimately habits with new ways of feeling and thinking.
Investing in the transformative effects of change-management with support of top-management and the right service-provider will lead to enthusiastic application of best-practice change-management approaches and improved performance, adding greater value for the organization. But change-management cannot be a short-term ‘program’ or perspective. Change-management should be based on best possible understanding of the society and company culture, avoiding the drawbacks of ‘parachuted-in’ practitioners.
