The 3 most common change pitfalls failing businesses everywhere

Sure, let’s change everything as long as I don’t have to change, seems to be the order of the day.

This is the somewhat unpopular viewpoint of those happy to complain about what is going wrong. Yet, when it comes to participation they have all the excuses in the world not to participate.

In change management, we tend to like labelling these people as disrupters and blockers. Yet, in reality, the vast majority of people in organisations from senior leadership down are pointing towards other people, whilst taking little to no accountability for being one of these very same people themselves.

What you end up with is a mass deflection exercise, called the blame game and surprise surprise, nothing changes. On the contrary, often the organisation goes backward.

Ownership and accountability for change is the single largest problem that holds organisations back in business transformations. There is a whole lot of smoke and mirrors that goes on, giving lip service to change with big words. However, with insignificant real individual action.

I spent a significant part of my early career, sitting on the fringes of the change management space. During this time I observed the change management process, utilising a plethora of complicated frameworks and tools, only to see a repetition of limited success, whilst the vast majority of the time, there was absolute failure time and time again, to the frustration of every change manager.

There are some key repeating patterns that I became aware of. I then adopted strategies into my practice of change management to avoid some fundamental failures of transformation programs that might surprise you.

So here they are:-

Change Leadership is every Leader’s responsibility

For any workplace to change, the people leading the change, must be prepared to change personally and professionally as part of the change strategy.

Why? Because a fish rots at the head.

So, if as a leader, you are not prepared to change both personally and professionally, you are setting your entire organisation up to fail.

You might think this sounds harsh, yet the proof, so to speak, is in the pudding. Exceptional change leadership commitment, from the very top of the organisation must be a non-negotiable. Without it, any transformation program is doomed to fail.

Commitment is not lip service either. Whether as an executive, you want to admit it or not, lip service to change required through business transformation programs, is common practice at senior levels of organisations. Political game-playing and lack of leadership group cohesion must be obliterated at any cost.

The only successful way forward in business transformations is a fully aligned and committed leadership team.

This means you must remove all roadblocks to success in your organisational structure before you even consider a business transformation program. Avoiding this step has been proven time and time again to be disastrous.

Effective Stakeholder Engagement is a preparation exercise

To achieve success, before your organisation undertakes a transformation journey. You must engage with all staff to uncover the existing problems that need to be solved by the transformation, causing bottlenecks and friction in the organisation, instead of the leadership-perceived problems.

This is essentially due to the lack of proximity Senior Leaders have to the problems that exist across their organisations. Simply because without direct interaction where the friction occurs, the leadership team are unlikely to know what then needs to be changed to remove the friction.

Senior leaders tend to focus on strategic outcomes. Without understanding the problems deep in the organisation that impact strategic goals, it is like playing pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded.

The people deep in the organisation are at the cold face. By collaborating with them through effective stakeholder engagement, Senior leaders can connect desired strategic objectives to outcomes. This occurs as a result of a problem-solving approach that can support the removal of the bottlenecks and friction, currently hindering the achievement of strategic objectives. Good stakeholder analysis therefore becomes a win/win for all parties.

If you don’t commit to a comprehensive stakeholder engagement process, before the commencement of project delivery. You will likely completely lose the engagement of your people, who are in reality the ones who will be doing all the heavy lifting during project delivery.

When you don’t undertake comprehensive stakeholder analysis, before the commencement of project delivery, you then place an excessive workload on your people on the fly during project delivery. This can play a significant role in burnout when staff are already busy with business-as-usual activities. If high cadence delivery continues, burn-out becomes a real problem, potentially resulting in high dissatisfaction, and or high staff turnover.

As a result of the organisation’s lack of psychosocial responsibility, the organisation could quickly find itself in hot water fast, exacerbating the problem the further you go into the delivery program unabated.

There are legal requirements regarding managing psychosocial responsibility as an employer. Once you hit a roll of these unmanaged risks head-on, the slow, and seemingly unseen demise of the program, will fast turn into a high-speed rollercoaster downhill.

Current & Future State Analysis and Planning is non-negotiable

Before engaging with any external vendors or partners through a transformation program, your organisation must know your current state and the desired future state clearly, that you want to create through the transformation program.

Without knowing clearly where you are and where you want to go, your organisation is doomed to failure, which can cost you a lot of wasted time, resources and money.

Without being clear about where you are, and where you want to go collectively, you will burn out your best people. This will result in staff turnover of often the key supportive people, who you need to stay to ensure successful outcomes.

Poor analysis, alignment and planning create these unnecessary circumstances, potentially exacerbating the risk profile of your organisation and the program delivery, at the same time.

It is well known and understood in industry, that your best staff always leave first. This is usually because they know their value, even if the organisation doesn’t see it. These people are also constantly over-utilised and stretched, due to a lack of capability across the organisation in their area of expertise.

Why these 3 focuses are so important

By being aware of these three key focuses before a transformation program begins, you have the greatest chance of success.

Why? Good planning, analysis and stakeholder engagement are well-known factors in successfully achieving business transformation program outcomes.

Taking shortcuts or assuming as a leadership team what needs to change, is an absolute recipe for disaster that could cause significant impacts to your business, which will have both short and long-term detrimental implications.

Make these changes in your structure to set you up for success

Start today by focusing on these three things and you will see the immense difference they make.

If your leadership team is not prepared to change personally and professionally, it might be time to find new leaders.

If you are one of those leaders, it may be time to step aside so you don’t hold the organisation back.

Alternatively, if you work for an organisation where your leaders expect you to change, but are not prepared to change along with it, run for the hills before you get completely burned out.

I have seen burned-out good people in business, more times than I would like to count. This leaves people feeling completely depleted, undervalued, depressed, and stressed which can take a huge hit on their self-worth. No job or business transformation is worth that, no matter how much they pay you.

There is a better way

Believe it or not, business transformation programs can be enjoyable and beneficial to everyone who participates when you get the pace and focus right.

It takes everyone working together to move an organisation forward, from the top down, and that includes you too.

If you want to know more, check out my other articles or reach out for a chat.

Think about what role you are playing and consider if it is the right role to support change in your organisation.

Much love to you all