Seven reasons why change fails and what you can do about it
Change is hard. In fact, McKinsey found that nearly half of all organisational change efforts fall short of their performance goals. Find out why, and how to make your next change initiative one of the successful ones.
The research on change
Change is hard. In fact, McKinsey found that nearly half of all organisational change efforts fall short of their performance goals. Fast forward a year, and 13% more have fizzled out. After three years? A staggering 88% have failed.
So why is meaningful change so difficult to pull off?
Whether you’re rolling out a new leadership programme, driving a sustainability push, or gearing up your teams for the skills of tomorrow, understanding what typically goes wrong is the first step to getting it right.
From what our clients have told us, and backed by the research, there are seven common reasons change efforts fail:
- Change fatigue. Change fatigue kicks in when transformation after transformation lands with no breathing room in between. Your top performers burn out, the rest disengage and your next ‘critical’ initiative gets lost in the noise. One trick to try: position your initiative as a continuation of previous ones, not a handbrake turn in a new direction.
- Lack of understanding. By the time your inspiring message reaches those it affects, it’s often vague and forgettable, not to mention told inconsistently across the organisation. How could it not be, with thousands of people involved in gradually trickling a message down? One trick to try: Create several assets that tell your compelling story in different formats that can be shared at scale. Think launch video, recorded audio conversation between leaders, one-pager, posters…
- Resistance. Change will always be harder than staying the same. So without clear motivation and communication that inspires action, nothing moves. One trick to try: Make the new path feel safer and surer than staying put.
[Successful transformations]
tend to invest in capability building across the organization, using the later stages to lock in new leadership, technical, and functional skills. According to the survey, organizations that achieved most of their “people” goals in a transformation were twice as likely as other respondents to sustain those goals for more than three years.
Overcoming the pitfalls
Book a call- Lack of leadership commitment. If leaders aren’t on board, nobody else gets on the train. They need to lead the way. One trick to try: Build a business case that shows the connection between your change and what your leaders care about, whether that’s revenue, efficiency, mission, competitive edge…
- Lack of capability to execute. Messaging alone won’t build the capabilities that make change happen. Your people will likely need new capabilities to work in the new way. One trick to try: Plan early for interactive, application-based training that you can roll out at scale.
- Inadequate resources. The human and behavioural dimensions of change are critical, but often underscoped and underplanned for. One trick to try: Translate the change strategy into clear behaviours for your people, making it easy for them to understand what’s expected.
- It simply doesn’t stick. It’s all too easy for old habits and old ways of working to creep back in, which will slowly and silently undermine your change if nothing is done to prevent it. One trick to trick: Consider how you can remind, reinforce, and reward the new behaviours and capabilities you want to see.
Change might be hard, but it’s not impossible. By tackling these seven common pitfalls head-on, you can give your next initiative a far better shot at success. Remember, the change strategy is only half the story. The other half? Execution. Behaviour. Buy-in. With the right focus on these aspects, meaningful change can and will stick.