Common Mistakes

80% of the failures in managing change in complex organizations can be traced to a few common mistakes. The Hawthorne approach to comprehensive implementation management has its roots in a two-year effort within McKinsey and Company to understand why change efforts so often fail, and what actually works in managing change in complex organizations.

1. No performance focus. Success requires simultaneously demanding business results and changes in skills and behaviors. All too often, managers overly focus on activities, skills and culture, or structural changes without creating a "rock solid linkage" of these efforts to business results. Without that linkage, change
efforts flounder.
 

In your organization: How clear and specific are the performance metrics (e.g., market share, productivity innovation)? Are all change activities clearly linked to these metrics? Have short-term wins been defined to build credibility and momentum?

2. Lack of winning strategy. The best change program in the world cannot overcome a structurally disadvantaged industry position (e.g., inadequate scale, the wrong technology, a disadvantaged location).

In your organization: Does a winning strategy exist? Is there a reasonable chance of creating one with available resources, leadership, etc.?

3. Failure to make a compelling and urgent case for change. What is obvious to the top (or consultants) may not be so obvious to other pivotal players.

In your organization: How real and meaningful is the case for change to pivotal groups? Does a "burning platform" exist? If not, how will you create it?

4. Not distinguishing between decision-driven and behavior-dependent change.
Creating higher performance always requires a mix of decisions (e.g., changes in business portfolio, market positioning, pricing) and behavior change (changes in skills, culture). Not understanding that behavior-based change requires a very different mindset and different leadership skills result in more languishing change efforts than just about anything else.

In your organization: What is the mix of decision and behavior changes? Are the appropriate mind-sets and skills being applied?

5. Failure to mobilize and engage pivotal groups. Sustained behavior and skill change cannot be mandated and commanded from on high. Consequently, pivotal groups and individuals need both a compelling value proposition (what's in this for me) and direction and support (e.g., new goals, information, tools, etc.). Effective mobilization goes far beyond communication, which is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of the process.

In your organization: What groups are pivotal to implementing the change? How effectively are they engaged in finding ways to achieve the new goals and strategies?

6. Over-reliance on structure and systems to change behavior. Structural and systems changes help create a new context and orientation. And they have the surface appeal of being visible and fast. But they rarely result, in and of themselves, in broad-based behavioral change or skills development. They can just as often result in confusion and sap energy as people focus on figuring out "what the new organization means" rather than on "how to achieve business goals in new ways".

In your organization: Will structure and incentives alone drive the change? What else is required to get the organization performing in new ways?

7. Lack of skills and resources. Change does not happen by goals and exhortation alone. Like any business operation it takes the right skills and resources. Often companies simply fail to put the time, people and resources against the opportunity. Paradoxically, successful change often demands the very skills they are trying to create.

In your organization: Has leadership allocated resources commensurate with the challenge and opportunity? Does it have the skills or a credible plan to acquire or develop them?

8. Leaders' inability or unwillingness to confront how they and their roles must change. The ceiling on any attempt to change the direction of an organization is the personal limitations of the senior executives, individually and as a group. Whatever the top team regards as possible becomes possible for the company. Whatever proposals it cannot entertain, whatever behaviors individual members cannot adopt, become effectively impossible for the organization.

In your organization: How clear and aligned is the leadership group on the overall change process and the role they must play? Are they willing to model the values and behaviors they demand of others?

9. Inability to integrate and align all the initiatives. Major change inevitably requires dozens of initiatives (strategy projects, re-engineering, training, leadership development, communications, management system redesign, etc.). Often these initiatives have different consultants supporting them. The result: a massive "systems integration challenge" in which all initiatives are broadly targeted to the same objective (a higher performing organization) but invariably generate conflict and confusion as to how they relate to one another.

In your organization: Is there an overall architecture to help guide and fit all the pieces together?