Change management is not a new discipline – it’s existed for almost as long as businesses have been a concept. And yet, despite eons of collective experience, we are still seeing a huge number of transformation projects fail.
Is it because we need to develop even more methodologies? Is it because our slide decks just aren’t long enough? Or is it because we’ve been relying on assertions that are actually nothing more than myths?
The exploration of why it suits the big consultancies to keep peddling these fallacies is an entirely separate topic. But when it comes to the myths themselves – what are they, why have they endured for so long, and why have businesses fallen so hard for what could be termed the Great Change Con?
Communication is about telling people what’s happening
The gap between telling someone information and communicating with them is so large it could be more accurately described as a chasm. And simply sending an all-staff email or dictating the plans at a team meeting widens this gap to the point of creating an ‘us v them’ situation – an ideal breeding ground for misinformation, speculation and concern about the future.
By not providing ongoing opportunities for conversation, checking for understanding, or empowering people to ask questions and make suggestions, you haven’t really communicated at all – and you certainly haven’t engaged properly with your workforce.
People need information, but the way in which it’s shared, and the degree of empathy and transparency shown by leadership shape how the message is received. The responses staff are met with when they ask questions is also pivotal – CIPD research concluded treating enquiries as legitimate rather than dismissing them as ‘resistance’ helped people make sense of change in the context of their own roles, adding that successful transformation was dependent on building trust and encouraging genuine dialogue.
If you’re expecting teams to fully support your plans, then there’s no easy way round it – you’ve got to put in the effort to engage with them from start to finish.
Focusing on business outcomes will garner team support
During the strategy stage, it’s likely that the majority of the project planning was focused on business outcomes. It’s understandable if leaders are excited about goals like mergers, implementing new technologies or diversifying into new markets, and want to share them with their teams. But what about the people within those teams, and how the changes will benefit them individually?
Full, unwavering support of a project typically requires some level of personal investment. Perhaps there will be increased chances for internal promotion, perhaps there are salary increases on the horizon – either way, people naturally want to understand what the change means for them, not just what it means for the company as a whole.
If we use the right methodology, the project will succeed
This myth promotes the idea of a solution being guaranteed to work just as well when copied and pasted into any company and situation – rather than a personalised approach being needed for every change project.
It also conveniently overlooks that buy-in from your people has a far greater impact on the outcome even if you’ve stuck rigidly to your methodology. Navigating through a period of change requires emotional intelligence, strong leadership skills, and a culture built on trust and honesty – academic research published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management emphasises this point, highlighting the intrinsic link between eventual outcome and confidence and trust in leaders.
But hey, at least this approach makes it easy to blame at the method when it all goes wrong, rather than taking accountability for overlooking people in favour of a fixation on processes.
A magnitude of myths
There are many more misleading and misunderstood sentiments that have circulated the change management world for years, if not decades. But the majority of them link back to a failure to focus on the people affected by the change.
A preoccupation with processes can leave people on the sidelines, simply watching changes unfold without feeling part of them. Presenting solutions rather than asking questions, treating enquiries as obstacles not genuine opportunities to engage, and devaluing the human aspect of the project all erode trust, and significantly impact the likely outcome.
In fact, recent research from Harvard Business Impact found organisations with a genuinely people-centred approach were 2.3 times more likely to achieve successful change than those focused on processes or systems.
If we can collectively begin to see past the myths, and examine precisely where projects are falling short, then we have an opportunity to drive up the number of change programmes which succeed. But this requires a genuine shift in perspective, a willingness to have grown-up conversations, and a curiosity to question exactly why we’re being sold the lie that processes not people are the be all and end all of change management.
Mark Green is founder of Change Rebellion
