Change Management Lessons Learned and the Biggest Causes of Failure

So what is change management? The traditionallessons from the experiences of project teams
project approach to change management - seesrecently or currently involved in business process
it as a set of tasks which if executed successfullyre-engineering projects.
get a result. In other words the typical processKey findings in the latest report show the 4 key
led approach which has failed so consistently andlessons learnt:
so spectacularly over the last 20 years!(1) "More effective change management" - is the
There are 3 main reasons for the astonishinglymain thing that project teams would do
high 70% failure rate of ALL business changedifferently on the next project.
initiatives:(2) Top management of teams and the their
1. The gap between the strategic vision and aprojects means they were more likely to
successful programme implementation and thecomplete their project at or above expectations.
lack of a practical change management model and(3) The planning stage, was universally regarded
tools to bridge that gap.as the most important phase in the project -
2. The "hidden and built in resistance to change" ofbecause this was where scope and roles were
organisational cultures, and the lack of processesdefined.
and change management methodologies to(4) The primary obstacle to a successful
address this.implementation was resistance to change. This
3. Failure to take full account of the impact of thewas mentioned 6 times more that any other
changes on those people who are most affectedfactor.
by them i.e. the absence of good strategies forClearly the single biggest reason for the
managing change.astonishingly high 70% failure rate has been the
Prosci is the recognized leader in business processover-emphasis on project process rather than the
design and change management research, and ispeople aspects - the failure to take full account of
the world's largest provider of changethe impact of change on those people who are
management and re-engineering toolkits andmost impacted by it.
benchmarking information. [This is not aClosely allied to that reason is the lack of process
commercial - I'm just establishing their credentials!]to directly address the human aspects of change.
They are the publishers of "Prosci's Best PracticesProperly applied, this is exactly what the holistic
in Business Process Re-engineering and Processand wide view perspective of a programme
Design" which is based on research with 327based approach to change management will
organisations world-wide.deliver.
The objective of this study is to provide real-life