Making Organizational Change Efforts Successful

Article by Dr. John E. Kello

Let's start with something we all know: change is hard. When asked (or required) to change, many people (and organizations) find the process stressful. Even when “self-inflicted”, change is stressful. Given the opportunity to stand pat instead of undergoing change, many people and organizations choose to stay with the familiar. It's so much easier. As the great pioneering philosopher and psychologist William James famously said, “Habit is the enormous flywheel of society”.

Change is Indeed the Constant

As much as we can all agree that change is hard, there's a curious thing about change. The reality is that we are necessarily changing all the time, all our lives, like it or not. Growing a couple of inches over the summer as an adolescent. Changing schools. Starting your first job. Taking a better job. Moving into a new apartment. Getting married. Buying a house. Starting a family. Retiring from a long career. Change is not optional. True status quo usually lasts only for a very short time.

One obvious challenge of change is fear of the unknown. Better the devil you know than the one you don't, as the old saying goes. Things as they are may not be great, but at least we know how to deal with them. So, what about the new automated system at work that is “supposed to make things so much easier…”? Or the new product line that is “supposed to increase our profits”…? Even if change is absolutely necessary, no one has a crystal ball, and despite all the planning and due diligence that we put in, the change may not make things better; it might even make things worse. Remember the venerable Law of Unintended Consequences. Oh my!

Changing the Organization

Change is tough enough at the individual, personal level. It's tougher still, usually much tougher, at the organizational level. Major organizational change – so called “transformation” – is very challenging indeed. Organizational theorists and consultants have observed and participated in such efforts, and have documented many such efforts and their results. And the track record for major organizational change efforts is spotty at best. A now-classic Harvard Business review article from the mid-1990's (a time rife with, and inspired by, such mega trends as Total Quality Management, Kaizen, Kan Ban, self-directed work teams, just to name a few) was tellingly titled “Why Transformation Efforts Fail”.

This issue is so important and so pervasive that many have written about it, including me. But I think the basic strategies and rules of thumb bear repeating, as I have seen organizations at times struggle even with the basics. So, in this article I am going back to the basics.

First, and maybe most obviously, there has to be some real reason to change. In fact, there almost always is. As others have said, today's success guarantees us nothing. Run the same plays over and over and sooner or later your business may be dead. Just consider the major companies, products, and industries that were once leaders and are now gone. Want to go to Blockbuster and rent a movie on VHS? For organizations to be successful for the long haul they have to be operating both at a tactical here-and-now level and at a long-term strategic level, in a balanced way, not over- or under- emphasizing either.

Organizations as Living Systems

To put on the professor hat for a moment, the prevailing theory in organizational science is the Open Systems Model, in one form or another. It is an overarching framework that provides guidance for research and practice regarding organizational change and success. It represents the animate (as opposed to mechanistic) approach to “the organization”, i.e., as a living thing and not as a machine. The organization may look like a machine, with its org chart, distinct departments, spread sheets, assembly lines, cubicles, etc. – a "clockwork" process. But in some ways your body also looks like a machine. It is made up of systems which have to work in concert, be maintained, be repaired if there are breakdowns, etc., but your body is of course an animate, living system. So is your organization.

The Open Systems Model envisions the organization as a kind of super-organism, with a variety of internal sub-systems (such as operations, sales, HR, etc.) which must be mutually supporting and in good alignment in order to enable positive overall outcomes, i.e., success however it may be defined. In addition to being internally aligned, the organization must “fit” its environment. Biologists, going at least as far back as Darwin, have emphasized the concept of fitness, captured for example in the phrase “survival of the fittest”. The concept means literally fitting the requirements of the environment.

Staying with the animate metaphor of the Open Systems Model, organizations, like living organisms, must respond adaptively to the demands of the environments in which they live. Living creatures must find food, find mates, and avoid predators. The broader environment which they inhabit is, and here's the critical part, constantly changing in ways that are not at all completely predictable. So too for the mega-organism, the organization.

Organizations must deal not only with internal perturbations (machine failures, IT glitches, quality problems, unexpected resignations, slings and arrows, etc.), but they must also deal with a host of surrounding environmental factors which can fundamentally alter their fit within its environment. Technology changes can make their production processes or their products and services less competitive, or even obsolete. Regulatory changes can alter how they do what they do. A key supplier can ship bad raw materials, or suddenly go out of business. A major customer can cancel orders, or go bankrupt. New competition can come on the scene and take market share. Customer tastes can change. And any or all of that can happen suddenly.  

For organizations to be durably successful, they must attend not only to the health of the internal environment, but must scan the external environment for threats and opportunities. Beyond that, they should look for ways to influence, even to alter, that external environment to their benefit.

Concluding Thoughts

So, identify the primary reason(s) for a change. How will it make us better? Communicate widely and often the “why” of the change. Only once the stakeholders – those who implement the change and/or are most affected by it – understand and embrace the rationale for the change, will the change have a fair shot at succeeding.

The next step is to develop and communicate the implementation plan, the marching orders, the first steps. What will we do, and how will we do it, in order to make the change successful?

We are all changing all the time, individuals and organizations. Better to be proactive and make planful change with a clear supporting rationale than to “be changed” by events and have to respond reactively, or to fail to see or accept the reasons to change and face underperformance, even extinction.