Some organizational ‘change projects’ fail because strategies are not well executed and poor planning makes the transformational projects unsuccessful. However there are some organizations which might have a complete opposite effect when it comes to change mainly because of how the project leaders guide them towards the right avenue to success.
Change Management plays a vital role in every project in order for the organization to achieve something thus it is important for leaders, change managers, management consultants and advisors to understand that there are two main issues if ignored will most likely make their change project fail. The first is failure to build the business case for change. Kotter in his book (Leading change, 1996), pointed out the first step in creating change in an organization is to “establish a sense of urgency”. Establishing a sense of urgency is crucial to ensure proper flow of change process. It is compulsory to link this urgency to the business aspects of the business and this require conducting proper diagnosis and determining the internal and external business reasons mandating the change project. Nothing could bring organizations including their management out of their comfort zones like feeling there are much at stake if business remains as is and this will bring the extra effort and commitment to the change project.
The other main reason for change projects failure is that they do not identify behavior change required to accomplish the project and achieve the results. The far most needed organizational change in most transformational and organizational development projects is behavioral and cultural change and without this being part of the project, failure is a probability. Change managers must identify behavioral patterns that need to be established for their projects before setting up processes, procedures and policies. Proper addressing and monitoring of the behavioral patterns are necessary in order to have smooth flow of the change project process and help make the transformation a success.
(Content Credit to Mr. Ahmed Abounahia, MBA)
