Successful Change Management

“Change ahead of the market. Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.” – Peter Drucker

True statement but in spite of that,

Strategy Execution, Change Management, Performance Improvement Initiatives Fail 85% of the Time!

Think about it, how many new and improved plans and programs have you initiated over the years that have started out strong and lost momentum? Soon it was back to business as usual.

Without aligning processes and personal incentives to attainment of strategy, and intelligently prioritizing what needs done along with what need to no longer be done, they are destined to fail.

The illustrations below shows the day-to-day conflict between running the business and changing the business. If priorities and incentives aren’t changed providing focus on both execution will suffer.

If you keep doing the same things, you’ll continue to get the same results.

How committed are you to changing your business for the better? Do your actions reflect your answer?

Change is a constant. It’s never easy and the pace is always accelerating. That’s something that doesn’t change. Another thing that doesn’t seem to change is the failure rate of change initiatives. Depending on what study you want to believe, that rate has held steady in the 70% – 85% range for many years.

Think about it. How many seminars, symposiums or conferences have you been to over the years? Odds are you came back with good ideas and initiated some new programs. But did any of them actually change your business for the better? Most likely these initiatives started strong and then fizzled out. Soon it was back to business as usual.

Gear wheels or spinning wheels?
Experience has shown me that the biggest reason so many change initiatives fail is because they are not driven by a clear and compelling vision and strategy for the business. As a result, instead of functioning as gear wheels that propel your business forward, change initiatives become spinning wheels that take you nowhere.

On the other hand, when a compelling vision and well-thought-out business strategy are at the core of your change initiatives…your odds for success increase dramatically. Because this environment forces you to make sure that the priorities and incentives you set accurately reflect the day-to-day challenge of both running the business and changing the business.

Run the business. Change the business.
For example, I’m working with a healthy, growing company right now that’s reached a key transition point in their development. So while the executive team is running the business they are resolutely focused on changing the business. This change process (part of the company’s strategic plan) calls for substantial capital investments for the next two years that will impact near term profitability.

Much of the executive compensation was tied to net margins, so to ensure a wholehearted buy-in – and successful execution of the change initiatives – I worked with the company to change the comp plan. Now, half of executive compensation will come from the achievement of plan goals and half from net margins.

Call me today to learn how I can help you develop sustained and predictable improvement initiatives for your organization.

662-844-9088

Click here to download our free 18 point Bottom Line Focus Self-Assessment