Posts Tagged “Leadership”

I’m working on a presentation for a human resources conference, and as part of the presentation, I’ll be covering why transformation efforts fail. Covering the topic, however, presents me with an interesting dilemma. Should I talk about the failures I have seen? What would this say about me? “Presenting the world’s best speaker on the subject of failure….”

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to reference others.

Perhaps the best work on why transformation efforts failure comes from John Kotter of Harvard. His 1995 article in the Harvard Business Review, entitled “Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” qualifies as an oldie but goodie. If you haven’t read the article, it is worth the $6.50 to download.

His major point is that successful transformation efforts happen because leaders do eight things right, and they do them in the right order. Here are Kotter’s perspectives on the eight mistakes leaders make:

1. Not establishing a large enough sense of urgency
2. Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition
3. Lacking a vision
4. Under-communicating the vision by a factor of ten
5. Not removing obstacles to the new vision
6. Not systematically planning for, and creating, short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Not anchoring changes in the corporation’s culture

My thoughts:

• A consultant is sometimes hired to help with Nos. 1-3, and political delicacy is frequently required. The consultant may need to say, “The emperor has no clothes.” He or she also may need to follow that up with, “and doesn’t listen well either.”
• Nos. 4-6 are the gory hand-to-hand combat steps of change, and the consultant must be in the background. If the consultant is highly visible during this phase, unintended morale issues will likely result. A consultant can help with tactics and execution, but the leaders of change must be the employees themselves.
• Consultants are usually not around for Nos. 7 and 8. The engagement has ended. Consultants usually see #7 and #8 when they are reviewing the shortcomings of previous changes.

Stefan Stern has written a great piece in Financial Times on transformational change and uses two examples to buttress his claims. The success story is the opening of a new terminal for the cross-Channel Eurostar train service. The failure story is the opening of the new British Airways terminal at Heathrow airport. The highlights of the Heathrow story are provided below:

“consider the horrors of the launch of Heathrow’s T5 in March. Sure, as far as the construction of the site was concerned, it was a triumph, a £4.3bn project completed on budget, on time and in full. But in spite of BA running a three-year change programme, called “Fit for 5″, we all know what happened come opening day.

Baggage handlers tried to warn their bosses about the problems they could foresee. The site is huge. Employees, who had not had enough training, simply did not know where they were supposed to go. More time had to be allowed to get staff from their locker rooms to the arrival and departure gates. And, as for the lockers – the new ones were not big enough to hold all the baggage-handlers’ clothing and belongings, including bulky wet-weather gear. Parking space, also far from the terminal building, was inadequate.

Managers were told about all these things. And BA chief executive Willie Walsh did not appear to know how grave the problems were. (He later told MPs that he had taken a “calculated risk” pressing ahead with the launch date.) But the clock ticking down to the March 27 opening had kept ticking, and apparently it could on no account be stopped.

Managers sometimes complain that their people “hate change”. That is just not true. People hate stupid change, change that they have no influence over, change that is simply imposed on them.
To err is human. We all do it, even – you will just have to believe me here – journalists. But looking back at the T5 fiasco, it seems clear that a bit of honest, straight talk (and action) at the right time could have helped avoid much of the subsequent aggro.

How hard is it really for managers to recognise these basic truths: that staff (including managers) need to be trained properly to do their jobs well, that employees on the ground may have useful things to tell you about the reality of the work they are doing, and that large-scale, difficult changes need to be prepared for thoroughly?

So much in the world of management seems ultimately to be a matter of common sense, of basic human decency, in fact. You could almost believe that most management foul-ups would be avoided if only people did a bit of serious thinking first. Employees could then get on with their work calmly and productively. Life would go serenely on. And, in this blissful world of efficiency and success, there would certainly be no need for management columnists.”

There would be a whole lot less need for management consultants as well!

The social scientist, Kurt Lewin, once stated, “If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.”

There are many reasons for and against every decision. Knowing what those reasons are and how to properly weigh them to make the right decision can be more art than science. However, Lewin’s concept of force field analysis is a technique change leaders can use for evaluating the variables present in their change management program before making the decision to go ahead.

Within the idea of force field analysis there are driving forces – those things helping you achieve change – and restraining forces – those that would prevent change from occurring. By listing those forces, as shown below, force field analysis offers you a clearer picture of the strategies needed for successful change. Specifically, force field analysis helps you:

• Decide if you have the right support for the change initiative
• Identify what obstacles are standing in your way
• Find ways to reduce or marginalize those obstacles

Change leaders who take the time to weigh the pros and cons in this way will have the information they need to weaken the negative forces and strengthen and leverage the positive ones. For the pictoral learner, placing concepts into a picture yields an immediate grasp of what to minimize, and what to augment.  Even for those who aren’t pictoral by nature can gain the understanding and engagement of those who are by depicting the situation as simply as is done below.