More than any other skill, the ability of an executive team to lead and manage change in the workplace makes the difference between an organization’s success and failure. Consider the following:
- Forty-three percent of the companies listed as the best of the best in the book Search for Excellence no longer exist because of an inability to manage change.
- In Fortune 1000 companies trying to accomplish change, success rates are less than 50%.
- The lack of this competency is the number one factor that causes bright, talented and hard-working individuals to derail their careers, according to the Center for Creative Leadership in Greenville North Carolina.
In my experience, there are two major factors in the success or failure of a change initiative: the attitudes of leadership and the focus of their attention during the change process.
How can leadership cause a change process to fail? Being a successful change leader means the leader must go first! Leaders can be as resistant to doing things differently as any other employee. I often hear from leaders who want to run a workshop to ‘change our employees.’ The truth is that it always starts at the top. Even if it were possible to change employees with a magic wand, if the leadership does not begin to think differently and do things differently, the change will be minimal and short-term.
If the employees are told to be more people focused, goal-driven and take responsibility for solving problems, but the management remains task-driven, managed from the top-down and crisis oriented, the results will be disappointing at best.
The key point is that leadership sets the pace for the entire organization to follow; and, the way a leader views change will be mirrored at every level of the organization.
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