Achieved Strategies

The next several days the blog posts will have a different angle.  I want to explore what leaders can do to successfully integrate a change into a company.  The content isn’t about leading people, but leading and overseeing a holistic approach to making change happen. Hopefully I don’t lose any of our readers with this brief divergence.

A daunting statistic faces many executives when they plan to make changes to their company: 70% of changes fail. The failure rate is so high in part due to the lack of involvement of employees.  And as you know, we are major proponents of employee-involved change efforts.

It is, however, an oversimplification to say changes fail to realize their organizational value because employees aren’t involved.  Other factors play into the lack-luster results.

Over the span of this three-part blog post, I’ll introduce seven organizational areas that if not appropriately assessed will siphon away the resources used to create and implement the change.  It’s important to note that the not all seven areas discussed apply to every organizational change.

To give this post a little context, let’s assume a business wants to introduce a new service.  It’s a service that hasn’t been offered before.  How does a company holistically determine what will enable the change to succeed, to defy the 70% failure rate?

Is there strategic alignment? Does the new service support the strategic direction of the company?  If the company is focusing on growth and awareness, then the new service must help with either or both.  And the new service must be a solution to the question: “What is the job the customer needs to be done?”  If it doesn’t, neither growth nor awareness goals will hit the mark.

The profit formula for the new service needs to generate value for the business. Don’t waste people and financial resources by not assessing and mapping out the strategic alignment of the new service.  This includes asking how does it advance the vision? Mission?

Is the right structure in place? Does the business need to restructure who and how people report to each other to ensure the service achieves strategic goals?  Does the way work gets done need to change?  This is an area many will shy away from because of the complexities.  And there are many different ways to align the structure to the strategic direction of the company.  To shy away from the assessment of the structure exposes the company to greater risks later: quality, group cohesiveness, customer satisfaction, etc.

I’d add to this section the importance of assessing how decisions are made or need to be made given the new structure.

• How have decisions been made in the past?
• Who’s involved?
• How are decisions communicated?
• How long does it take for decisions to be made?
• Is there clear ownership of the decision

Before the development of the service gets underway, assessing the two areas in this post is essential.  It is only the beginning of the work.  Tomorrow, I’ll share two other important areas to defy the odds: technological and process diagnostics plus the reward systems and measurements.