How to Implement Organizational Change?"Between 50 and 70% or organizational change efforts fail" Hammer & Champy - Reengineering the corporation.In light of this statement from the "inventors" of reengineering it is not surprising that the concept is being met with a certain amount of apathy and disdain these days.Having practiced in this area for more than a decade now, it is becoming increasingly clear that organizations are very capable of designing change but less capable of implementing that change. Furthermore, it is clear that short-term organizational pressures and long term organizational change frequently create a dichotomy. It is our assertion that failed change efforts did not succeed because the demands of the present became too overwhelming to allow the necessary focus on the long term.The result of course is that when people are confronted with the opportunity of changing their organization, the most immediate reaction is BOHICA - For those unfamiliar with the term let me just say that the last four letters mean Here It Comes Again.So the question arises, - how do you really implement complex organizational change?In our experience, the only escape from implementation failure due to the demands of the present, is the ap-plication of a systematic, rigorous and step-by-step approach to the subject. Over the last decade we have found several common traits in change efforts that actually produced the required change. (By-the-way, you may want to get hold of the seminal Harvard Business Review Article by Kotter entitled: "Leading organiza-tional Change").We recommend the following steps to our clients in most cases (the specifics will naturally be different in each case depending on the situation).Step 1 Executive AlignmentFirst of all you need to ensure that ALL the members of the executive team who are affected by the change, or who will be, are aligned on what the output/goals of the change ought to be. Generally we work with the ex-ecutive team to produce a set of goals and an executive behavior model appropriate to drive the achievement of these goals.Critical to the achievement of change is that the executive team understands and agrees on the critical busi-ness reason for embarking on the effort. - If no reason can be identified, the effort WILL fail.Step 2. Goal TranslationNext the executive goals need to translated to each level of the organization in a manner that is meaningful to each individual in the organization. If for example the executive goal is to improve organizational effective-ness by say 25% in one year, this will have different meaning if you are the person who ships the company's products or if you are the person who sells the company's products or if you are the accountant. The goals must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Additive (They add up to the overall goals), Reasonable and Time-bound) Furthermore the goals must be stated in language that is appropriate to each level of the organization.Generally the...
