Coaching, a change or fail issue

Change is hard. Anyone who has tried to switch careers, develop a new skill, a new technology, improve a relationship, or break a bad habit knows how hard it is. And yet for most people change will at some point be necessary, a critical step toward fulfilling their potential and achieving their goals, both at work and at home. They will need support with this process. They’ll need a coach. We all need coaching at a certain point in life. A senior, a mentor, a close friend we trust adding that perspective we are still missing, that final dot helping us to visualize the hidden picture.  Organizational change was once a seasonal experience. But today, managing continual disruption is a skill required of most leaders. Change management is the new management, which makes doing it effectively that much more difficult.

Despite extensive knowledge on the topic, failure rates among organizational change efforts remain high. Most reliable research estimates that 50%–70% of initiatives fall short, largely focusing on change implementation as the culprit. Common obstacles that organizations face include failure to sustain the effort over the long term, competing priorities, and under-resourcing. But some seeds of failure are planted long before change is implemented and some initiatives are set up to fail the moment they are conceived. I still remember my experience with a large group willing to establish itself as the leading lighthouse for industrial IoT integration having the wrong people in the wrong place, transforming their willing to change into a disastrous drama.

Change fatigue, the exhaustion that comes from excessive change, is one of the most common reasons for failure. It typically occurs when multiple changes are implemented at once and fail simultaneously as a result forgetting to build and organize the new culture and organization before searching for new profits.

This scenario is not uncommon. If you are driving major change at any organization, you are likely stepping into a track record of failure. Until you acknowledge the failures your employees have suffered through, they won’t believe that committing to change again will be worth it. To rebuild their resilience and win back their confidence, you’ll need to take three important steps at the outset of your initiative.

Acknowledge the pain of the past. Nobody understands the difficulty of change efforts more than those who’ve watched them fail before. But too many leaders charge ahead, trying to inspire people as though their approach is the first or is better, without acknowledging the pain of the past. Without realizing it, they are erasing the very real frustrations of their employees. The reality is that every organization has some track record of failure. That’s why it’s better to start with the assumption that people don’t trust your intentions or approach and are expecting you to fail as well.

Ground your plan in evidence. Most leaders begin their change efforts with some degree of organizational assessment. Knowing that past efforts failed is helpful, but knowing why they failed can strengthen your credibility. Every organization has ways it naturally undermines change, and diagnosing the saboteurs can help you avert them. It could be a culture of fear or risk aversion. It could be a heavily layered hierarchical structure that makes cascading change difficult. It could be inflexible reward structures that disincentive new behavior. It could be that the strategy of the organization is too disconnected from the change to make it seem relevant. One of the most common problems is the fragmentation of uncoordinated changes.

Regularly ask how your plan for change feels different from past efforts. Many leaders treat major change like a political campaign. They go on road shows touting the benefits of the change, sharing why it’s important for people to commit, and thanking everyone for working hard. They often make a special point of telling people why the change will succeed, proclaiming things like, “It’s our great people that will make this work,” while inferring their brilliant idea is the true driver of success. Leaders who want to avoid repeating past failures don’t tell anyone anything. They ask people to tell them if and how their plan for change feels different in an attempt to learn. Then they use those insights to stay on track.

Organizational change is one of today’s most difficult leadership challenges. We all have and share past failures and the only way to progress is in taking responsibility and learn from them.