According to an HBR article on What everyone gets wrong about change management, corporate transformations still have a miserable success rate. In fact, studies have shown that about 75% of change efforts fail. They fail to either deliver the anticipated benefits or are abandoned altogether.
Flawed implementation or bad execution are often to blame for such failures. However, analysis has shown that misdiagnosis is equally to blame. Often organizations pursue the wrong changes – and in a fast-moving business world, it is easy to make wrong choices.
Organizations hardly spend the time and energy to identify and drive alternatives – and even if they make time, it is not necessarily in a collaborative way involving the right stakeholders. It is critical that executive teams figure out not only what to change, but what to change first – and what the priorities are.
In Stop Doubling Down on your Failing Strategy, Vermeulen and Sivanathan in an HBR article said that a recent analysis of 137 key decisions in as many North American companies found that when only one course of action had been considered, 52% of the decisions resulted in failure. By contrast, when just one alternative had been considered, the failure rate dropped to 32%.
The 5 Fatal Transformation Flaws
- Following a problem-solution and/or action-recommendation approach
- Misdiagnose the problem and an inability to seek viable alternatives
- Lack of cross-functional engagement to drive accountability and responsibility
- Inadequate tools to deliver solutions
- Lack of appreciation as to the effort required to execute the plan
Initiating Innovation
It, therefore, makes good business sense to implement an innovative engagement process, involving the entire leadership team to identify and focus on the right changes.
An innovative engagement process is designed to obtain collaboration the from the entire executive team or stakeholder basis to develop creative ideas, understand the data, set priorities and hold the team accountable for delivery. Also, it gives leadership the responsibility to provide tools required for delivery.
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