It’s Monday morning, a public holiday in Australia, and I’m contemplating a colleague’s question about why so many transformation initiatives are wrongly deployed and unsustainable. I’m sitting on my deck with barefeet and spicy chai, it’s a lush monsoonal morning and I’m listening to the hum of the overhead fan; the incessant chatter of black spangled drongos in the palm-tops beside me; the family next door busily preparing for Chinese New Year tomorrow; and on the street, a group of Aboriginal kids talking and laughing in what sounds like Yolgnu Matha, the main language of North East Arnhem Land and probably their mother-tongue.
I say this, not to paint a poetic picture, but to demonstrate a point: change is as complex and varied as the varied environments we live in, and the multiple micro-environments within that. For example, Australia is a multicultural environment, yes, but where I live, in the tropical north of Australia, our multiculturalism is entirely different to other parts of Australia. We have over 100 different ethnicities living side by side (not in separate areas); about 30% of our population is Aboriginal (compared to 1-3% in the rest of Australia); and for almost 50% of our population English is not their first language – and for many Aboriginal people it is their 3rd or 4th language).
Given this – just say we’re implementing a major transformation program in the Northern Territory –would it be reasonable to look to a successful program from another state, say NSW, and to follow what they did, and expect it to work? Clearly not. More so, would it be reasonable to look to a transformation program from, say, north America, and expect it to work? No, no-one would do this. Yet that is what we do.
What about if we brought the people who implemented the program in NSW, or north America, to the Northern Territory to lead our own transformation, would that work? Would they be vested in the program’s success in the long term; would they have awareness of the local culture, environment and issues; will they have to live with the consequences if the program is deployed wrongly or unsustainably. No. Yet that is what we do.
In my opinion, and somewhat validated by research, a very neglected part of implementing change successfully is the action research / action learning component, that employs the very people who will be tasked with living with the change, and empowers them to contribute to its design, delivery, and ongoing support.
Beyond this, I have listed some observations below of why changes have failed in my specific culture. I cannot speak for other cultures.
(1) Change is very complex and includes multiple failure points – people, systems, technologies, processes, the organization (internal) environment, the broader external environment (economy, environment, politics, etc). You only need failure in one of these failure points for a program to derail. Not acknowledging the complexity, and failure to involve local people in identifying the manifold complexities is a key factor in why projects have failed.
(2) Not identifying, or underestimating the power/influence of these multiple complexities, leads to a tendency to view the change as a discreet program of work, rather than a component in a complex system. Not acknowledging the linkages at a systemic level is another key factor as to why previous projects have failed.
(3) Failure to adopt a contingency theory approach – that there is no “one best way” and that all possible factors must be considered in context before initiating any change program — can lead us to seek a silver bullet. A magic answer. And there are a thousand management gurus out there who promise us the magic answer. But the truth is, there is no silver bullet.
(4) Our human nature tends towards conformity – the single greatest motivator of human behaviour is “what other people do”. So if someone we respect has adopted the Silver Bullet Change Method (SBCM), it’s difficult for us to resist the temptation to jump on the bandwagon. We need to be seen to be “doing” what everyone else is “doing”. Even if there’s no published scientific base to Silver Bullet Change Method.
(5) Confirmation bias says that we will act in ways that confirm our prior choices. So once we’ve jumped on the Silver Bullet bandwagon, we will act in ways that confirm and support that choice, even in that face of clear evidence that is was not/is not a good choice. This is why failing projects continue beyond the point of no return.
(6) It could be that SBCM has been highly successful elsewhere – say in Germany, or Japan, or NSW – so we assume it will be successful for our transformation program. Lack of consideration of the transferability of change methods to our specific culture (organisation, and community), economy, demographics, industry, and organisation contributes to failure.
(7) Lack of reference to empirical, scientifically rigorous theory and evidence. Being informed by decisions that are opinion-based rather than evidence-based.
(8) Lack of a solid base of empirical scientifically rigorous theory and evidence. There’s simply not enough empirical research for practitioners to draw from. Despite the plethora of CM methods around, there’s really been nothing new since Lewin’s CM, and as David Rosenbaum notes in his excellent paper on planned organisational change management, perhaps little that is fundamental to the process has changed since Lewin, other than a degree of tweaking, “the impact of which may be questionable, given the prospect that historic change failure rates apparently continue”.
That’s my two bob’s worth, on this monsoonal Monday morning. 😉
