Change Management - Survival of the Most Responsive

Charles Darwin famously said that:that 70% of all BPR initiatives failed [Hammer and
"It isn't the strongest of the species that survive,Champy 1993]:
nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are"I don't regret saying anything; it's more what I
most responsive to change"left out. In particular, the human side is much
Any organisation whose processes, behavioursharder than the technology side and harder than
and cultures have evolved around a perceptionthe process side. It's the overwhelming issue."
and belief in a fixed and static environment, areEven Hammer now recognises that the people
finding that they have a limited effectiveness inaspects of change are "the overwhelming" issue!
the fluid reality that we are all currently(2) The emerging recognition of the "people
experiencing. Survival depends on continuousfactor" and the importance of the emotional
change.dimension
For your organisation to survive and prosper inChange is an emotional business. The failure to
this climate your feedback processes andaddress the human impacts of change is at the
behaviours need to be aligned to the reality ofroot of most failed change initiatives. It is not
your external environment - or you die.enough just to "manage" change; people need to
But in reality it's even harder than that. It's notbe led through change.
just about catching up with what is changing allOne of the major change leadership priorities is
around you - it's about doing it faster than yourrecognising and addressing the inner psychological
competition. So in a very real sense your survivaland emotional adjustments that people move
and success in organisational life isn't merely basedthrough in response to external organisational
on your ability to simply change - survival andchange events.
success is based on your ability to change faster.William Bridges was the first thought leader to
In recent interviews John Kotter makes thedraw the important distinction between external
disturbing point that the marginal rate of change isorganisational change and what he defines as the
increasing - and will continue to do so for theinternal "transition" that people need to move
foreseeable future. In his view, manythrough as they make a successful emotional and
organisations just can't keep up with the speed ofpsychological adjustment to the changed
change.circumstances that they are experiencing as as a
We used to believe that change occurs in cyclesresult of the organisational change.
and waves that ebb and flow. This may beIn my view, this is an extremely important aspect
accurate over long time spans of hundreds ofof change leadership and one that, in my
years, but in the present the rate of change isexperience, is invariably over-looked.
continually increasing, and the blunt reality is thatSo often it is just assumed by senior
continuous change is hard work and deeplymanagement that people can and will accept an
unpopular.organisational change.
2 key themes emerge:But, the failure to recognise and attempt to
(1) The failure of BPR and the over emphasis onaddress this dimension is a significant cause of
process at the expense of peopleorganisational change failure. The larger the human
Probably the single biggest reason for theimpact of the organisational change the greater
astonishingly high 70% failure rate of ALL businessthe need for some form of "transitional support".
change management initiatives has been theMany directors and senior managers have the
over-emphasis on process rather than people -emotional detachment and objectivity to make
the failure to take full account of the impact ofclear, sound strategic decisions yet seem to lack
change on those people who are most impactedthe "counter-balancing" self-awareness and
by it.emotional intelligence to realise the impact of their
The major lesson of the last recession was thatdecisions.
big companies had to learn fast how to think andThis omission frequently [and unnecessarily] delays
behave like the small companies they originallyor jeopardises the implementation of their
were. This led to the emergence and growth ofstrategic vision and the realisation of the
Business Process Re-engineering [BPR] thatorganisational benefits.
advocated that organisations get back to theChange management is about how you take an
basics and reexamine their roots.organisation from Position A to Position B, in the
The objective behind this was to attempt tofulfilment or implementation of a vision and a
achieve a massive step change in productivity andstrategy. The whole art of this is to how to carry
profitability by transcending organisationalyour people with you, so that the envisaged
boundaries and focusing on processes abovebenefits of the vision and strategy are actually
tasks, jobs, functions and people.realised.
A primary area of initial focus was establishingThe perspective of "change management as
customer needs and requirements and definingsurvival of the most responsive to changing
and implement the feedback processes to ensuremarkets and customer requirements" can be
that the organisation stayed aligned to changes inexpanded to include the perspective of "change
market conditions and customer requirements.management as the survival of the most
Only trouble was that it didn't work. Michaelresponsive to the needs and emotional
Hammer co-author of "Re-engineering therequirements of the people employed by the
Corporation"- the arch proponent of the processorganisation - who satisfy those changing
led approach to change and businesscustomer requirements".
improvement - revised his opinion and claimed