Q #222: What are the worst mistakes made with change initiatives?

My own experience has revealed a number of “the usual suspects.” They include not selecting the right objectives, not involving the best-qualified people, ineffective leadership, lack of sufficient support, and inconsistent measurement of progress. In Liberating Passion, written with Paul B. Brown, Omar Khan characterizes such mistakes as “the five cardinal sins of misleading change efforts.” There are:

1. Too much hype. Not enough action. “Many change efforts begin with a major internal PR campaign that often eerily resembles a National Political Campaign complete with pomp, ceremony, a big kick-off meeting with rousing speeches, photo ops, and evocative music.” Instead, explain with both passion and precision what needs to be done and why it needs to be done.

2. Over-advertise [or otherwise over-promise] how “massive” the change will be, and then only deliver iterative tweaking. This is a first cousin of #1. Inevitably, “after being jolted awake by the loud, pompous blast, people subsequently find their energy and belief in the undertaking fizzling. They see the same things happening as always, with perhaps a few incremental shifts.”

3. Create a frenzy and then just spend all your time in committees and meetings. People expect to achieve achieving or at least observe significant results. “Instead, they encounter endless meetings [to discuss what to discuss rather than what to do], Power Point slide shows and committee debates on the wording of various banners.”

4. Make no changes in senior leadership. With few exceptions, the current situation (i.e. the one in need of major changes) was created by current leaders. “Hence, either they to have to demonstrate how they will change, or else a number of them will have to be replaced by people who are clear exemplars of the new way of working and interacting.”

5. Involve no customers, ignore the market. “The change we’re igniting lives or dies by producing market value. Hence customers are a marvelous sanity check…External engagements help keep our ideas fresh, urgent, and exciting [as well as relevant]. This will in turn initiate and sustain meaningful action.”

Here’s a link to a wealth of resources you may wish to check out, especially the single most valuable list of links to other Web sites that I have as yet come across:

http://www.mavericksatwork.com/

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