Big change initiatives require a lot of time, money, and effort.
Often one or more start to run out as the project proceeds.
When this happens leaders must make a choice.
Since visible results are often what gets measured (date of the implementation, functionality of the system), they usually win out.
The losers wind up being the people being impacted by the change.
Costs of inefficiency, lack of engagement, confusion, or resistance gets masked within operating costs. It isn’t quantified or measured on a project plan.
Yet, these are precisely the costs that will hurt you the most. Studies have shown that the majority of major change initiatives fail. This happens even when the technical and functional parts of the process are built properly. This should come as no surprise. Unless you are operating in a fully automated environment, people represent the final link in making technology or processes successful.
One strategy that I’ve seen used is to motivate people with strong, positive messaging. Leaders play up the change and its importance to the future of the organization.
Yet, those same leaders are often the first to say, “Well, we can’t really afford two days of training so let’s just see how far we can get in eight hours” or “I don’t have that many resources to provide post go-live support. I need those people for other projects”, or, the most common one, “We’ll just have to ask people to step up a bit.”
In other words, “This change is important enough for you to be inconvenienced and work hard, but it’s not important for us (the organization) to put all we can behind its success.”
It’s true that all organizations face time and budget constraints. However, the best measure of importance is how you prioritize your time and money.
One new leader with whom I worked wanted to change the leadership skills and culture of his organization. He said that all leaders had to step up and improve their leadership ability. He was introducing a “new paradigm” for leading and managing the organization. He told his people that they needed to stretch themselves and that he was asking a lot from them.
Then in an effort to reduce costs, he cut the quarterly off-site leadership retreats from one day to half a day, moved it on-site to a small, uncomfortable room that required leaders to sit in theater-style chairs (as opposed to round tables where they could network and communicate), and stopped providing lunch.
The budget for leadership development went down, but so did the organization’s belief that leadership development mattered. The savings for those extra four hours and lunch cost more in goodwill and loyalty than they benefitted the budget.
I would bet that most leaders left that meeting thinking a lot more about how to cut costs than about how to change to a new paradigm or be a better leader.
You can’t expect your people to go the extra mile for you if you aren’t willing to go the extra mile for them.
If you cut corners and rely on your users to pick up the slack, your change will fail.
People need to see that you have done everything you can to support them. Only then are they willing to step up and support you. This is especially true when you are asking them to go above and beyond their normal effort.
People will rally around a priority; they’ll walk away from hypocrisy.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if we stopped measuring time and budget from the start to the finish of the project and instead measured from the start of the project until the organization realized the full benefit of the change.
