by Daryl Conner
The article provides a cookbook approach on how to lead effective change in an organization. The article begins by describing the change process and identifies the key approaches needed to effectively affect change.
The first section describes the pitfalls of doing change badly. In fact, it’s clear from the text that a badly executed change can result in far worse consequences than not trying the change in the first place. Furthermore, leaders identified with failed change related projects are diminished and are often rendered ineffective in all future endeavors.
The first step in effectively accomplishing change is identifying and clearly communicating the main problem that needs to be remedied. The decision matrix describes changes and the decision making process that needs to be applied to identify the correct change. The best scenario in which the necessary change was handle effectively. The worst outcome is achieved when the wrong change is implemented. Another bad outcome is when a leader, upon identifying a needed change, embark on the change without having the necessary skills or resource to achieve desired results. It is important to realize that the change being discussed is a major change –something that cannot be achieved with small, incremental improvements. Therefore the changes described are of the magnitude where the organization’s future is profoundly affected by the outcome of the change process.
While all agrees that change is good and often imperative, many barriers to change exist in any organization. The natural state of things is to defend the status quo. It is important for the change agent to illustrate the benefits of the change, but more importantly the, the change agent must show why the status quo will no longer suffice. The status quo must be shown to be more painful than the change. Only if the pain if doing nothing is greater than the pain of the change process will the change be embraced by the organization. Failed change projects are said to fall into “corporate black hole”, where project simply die. Many reasons exist for project failures. Mostly passed failures or past lack of commitment by all the relevant parties causes future project to fail.
Even if the identified change is accepted by the organization, the actual change process can still fail. One of the first pitfalls that cause failure is known as “Cascading Sponsorship”. In this case the sponsor simple delegates the job to someone else who might not have the credibility or ability to actual affect the change. Therefore the change sponsor must enlist other co-sponsors to achieve the team wide buy in necessary for eventual success. It is important for all change agents to have clearly identifiable roles. Any successful change efforts need to have a Initiating Sponsor (IS), a Primary sustaining Sponsor, and a number of Co-Sponsors, sometimes known as Local Sustaining Sponsors, each representing a relevant constituency. Also, a clear Target of the change must be identified.
Once all the actors in the change drama are identified it is important to orchestrate and track the actual change process through the various phases of the change project. Clear identifiable goals and millstones must exists and be easily accessible for all the players to see. Furthermore, the relationship between the Target, those being affected by the change, and the sponsor must be direct and governing. In many situations the change agent either doesn’t have direct managerial relationship with the Target, or has mixed relationship. In either case the Target has conflicting responsibilities and confused reporting structure, therefore the change project fails.
The article concludes with listing key characteristics of effective change leadership. If a leader carefully assess their own skills and gauges their own effectiveness against the checklist provided, the change project will have a great chance of success.
Boris Tabenkin
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