April 15, 2008
Obstacles and Challenges During Major Organizational Changes
Posted by Stephen Rock under Change Management, Reorganization | Tags: Internal Communication, Reorganizations, SHRM |In 2007, the Society of Human Resources published a study on Change Management during major organizational changes. At the risk of over-generalizing, just about everybody is reorganizing, but less than half of the organizations are doing so with a clearly defined approach. Approximately…
- 89% of large employers (500+ employees) had planned or implemented major organizational changes in the 24 months prior to the survey.
- 40% of organizations used change management consultant services during the change.
- Nearly two-thirds reported no particular model was followed during the change.
The survey also shows how the obstacles and challenges being confronted in major organizational changes.
It is no surprise there is resistance to major organizational changes. It also is no surprise that communication breakdown occurs. Sometimes breakdowns occur because the change being implemented has not been thought through. Sometimes communication breakdown is due to a failure of execution. As I watched one executive say to her team, “In times like these, you can never communicate enough, and it would appear that I failed to follow my own principles of leadership.”
Other challenges appear in different ways, but they all come from a common mistake: a tendency to under-resource initiatives. Whether it is people, time or money, the team charged with bringing about the change does not realize what it takes to execute a major organizational change.
We have faced the same challenges in our work. In our experience, there are two strategies that best address these issues:
- Measurement – Measure the number and types of communication. Measure attitudes. Measure attendance at lunch and learns. Measure everything, show how the measurements trend, and report on those measurements. The best way to get senior management involvement or additional resources is to show the measures that back your case.
- Leverage – The laws of physics are clear. With right sized lever, huge movements can be made easily. What are the levers for you to push and pull in your organization? Putting the COO on a speaking tour with employees? Publicly and broadly communicating status of progress by individual groups? You would be amazed to see the performance created when VPs agree to post the performance of their group relative to other groups.
April 15, 2008 at 8:58 am
The figure on employee resistance is a little misleading. The overt, outright resistance to change in any organization is rather low. It runs around 15%. That’s the squeaky wheel that gets all the attention. The majority of the resistance to change is the 70% of employees who do nothing hoping the change will go away. They are passive and will appear to go along with the change. They just aren’t going to do anything about it.
To make a change stick, it’s critical to deal with this silent majority.
April 16, 2008 at 9:42 am
Thanks for the observation. I have a couple responses.
1) the statistic is 70% of the time the change runs into resistance from employees - not 70% of the employees resist the change. You are right though - if folks misinterpret the statistic, then it misled.
(I play a game with my kids on statistics with the weather report by asking the question - is that 50% chance of of rain in 100% of the area, or is it 100% chance of rain in 50% of the area? Either way, the weather forecaster is correct by saying a 50% chance of rain. I’m going to be teaching them the phrase “Liars figure, and figures lie” shortly.)
2) I have some statistics on the where the resistance occurs in the organization. Unfortunately, in re-orgs, the resistance is at the middle manager level. Where the resistance is in the organization is as important as how many people are resistant. You have inspired another post. Thanks.