Each of us has an unconscious tendency to trip our upper limit switch, and each of us can eliminate that tendency. We deserve to experience wave after wave of greater love, creative energy, and financial abundance, without the compulsion to sabotage ourselves.
—Gay Hendricks, “The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level”
Having set a clear intention of how we want to be to get us where we want to go and having chunked it down to specific (SMART) goals, we may still experience failure.
Our best efforts often are sabotaged. There is often some insurmountable obstacle to achieving our goal. This chapter is about removing those obstacles. By obstacles, we mean things that get in the way and prevent that which we intended to be from happening. There are several reasons why the goals we set are not always achieved. There are times when we simply need to modify our goals based on what we’ve learned along the way. We have mentioned the need to remain open.
Often when pursuing a goal, we learn more and better ways to accomplish the same end. In these cases, we simply make necessary adjustments and continue on our merry way. This is a normal, in fact, essential process. But even then, there are times when we still fail to achieve our goals.
So in what ways do we fail to achieve our corporate goals?
- Failure to follow change management best practices
- Unanticipated external effect
- Unanticipated side effect
- Change exceeds the corporation’s capacity for change
- Insufficient cost/benefit
- Resistance from an unseen limiting belief
- Change not for the greatest good of all
- Weak to nonexistent commitment to change
Let us take a look at each of these in turn.
Change Management
Whether we pursue a single goal or a complex arrangement of many interrelated goals, each one invariably creates some level of change. One of the reasons we might fail to accomplish our goal or goals is that we ignore the best practices from the established field of change management. The research behind the change management industry has proposed many models of change over the last 30 years. And while there are myriad models of change management, no single model seems to quite capture it all. However, there are certainly some best practices that have stood the test of time. Most of these are known and understood by many executives. Essentially, it has been shown that change projects improve their chances of success when they have the following characteristics:
Corporate Sponsors: One or more corporate sponsors visibly support and model the change.
Resourcing: The change is adequately resourced by the best available talent.
Engagement: Everyone affected by the change is engaged in the process of change.
Communication: The compelling reason for the change, the process of change, the lessons learned, and the benefits of the outcomes are continually communicated.
Chunking: Change is chunked down into phases that can be delivered quickly to demonstrate incremental success.
Underpinning: The changes are underpinned.
Corporate Sponsors
You are probably very aware of the significant role played by senior executives in the success of any large-scale corporate change effort. Having highly visible corporate sponsorship is paramount to successful corporate change. At SIPTON, I observed a very remarkable effect. The average of all of the DiSC profiles of the employees in the office in New York was identical to the DiSC profile of the president of that office. The average of all of the DiSC profiles of the employees in the San Diego office matched that of the president of that office. Yet individual DiSC profiles varied as much as they would in any company. There seems to be more at play here than restricted hiring practices. In fact, many times the culture of a whole company or some subdivision is modeled on its established leader. Because one of the most predominant ways we learn is by modeling others, the example set by the leader, particularly when showing a new way to be, will have a significant impact.
Resourcing
Another key success factor in all change efforts is adequate resourcing. We often feel compelled to keep our most valued resources doing what they are doing (since they are obviously “doing it right”) while populating new initiatives with less essential and often less talented team members. Then we wonder why our efforts fail.
Engagement
Best practice in change management also demands that everyone affected by the change is fully engaged in the process of change. A common mistake is to believe that simply providing some rationale for a given change will obtain the necessary buy-in to that change. Indeed, some kind of rationale is absolutely essential for many people who value steadiness and predictability. But those who more readily embrace change are typically less interested in reasons. These people want to be involved in driving the change. They are open to change as long as it is not being done to them. These are the individuals usually identified as change agents. So, providing a rationale is a good start, but it is not enough to achieve buy-in for everyone.
A phrase used often to convey the reason for a change is the burning platform. If a platform is on fire, there is a compelling reason to move away from it. However, only about half of the population is more negatively motivated; they are driven away from something that is bad for them. The other half of the population is more positively motivated. These people need something positive and beneficial to move toward. The best change efforts provide both something to move away from and something else to move toward.
However, even if we provide a reason to move away from how things are and a benefit to move to something different, it is still not always enough to achieve buy-in for everyone. Buy-in requires engagement. People have different motivations and so need to align a proposed change with something that is valued by them. The change must appeal to something that is important to them; otherwise they will consciously or unconsciously sabotage the change effort. Buy-in is a process of individually enrolling people.
Communication
Enrollment demands continual communication of the compelling reason for a change, the process of change itself, the lessons learned on the way, and the ultimate benefits of the outcomes. When change management became an industry in its own right, it started to productize what is essentially a process. Communicating upbeat messages about how well the project is progressing is unlikely to promote any kind of engagement. At LOFTON, my own efforts to repeat the benefits of moving to a new database-management platform in a regular newsletter were well intentioned but failed. The process of change requires interaction. What I had failed to understand was that resistance was a necessary precondition for any kind of enrollment. Had I listened more to the resistance, I might have been able to find a better match between the technology and a real business need.
Chunking
Chunking down a project into phases that can be delivered quickly helps to demonstrate success. A succession of accomplishments quickly teaches the benefits of the effort and accelerates enrollment. A company, like an individual, is liable to lose interest over time without interim milestones. Both as individuals and as evolving enterprises, we learn through repetition.
Underpinning
The final best practice from the world of change management is to lock in results. I use the word, “underpin,” to mean securing the change in stages so as not to risk slipping back into old patterns. New Year’s resolutions fail because of the predominance of what we are used to. We tend to fall back to our comfort zone. Change is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and more than a little scary. We must first learn, through practice, to become consciously competent in some new way. Unless this new habit is protected in some way, we risk never making it to unconsciously competent.
If we do not lock in the new habit so that it is performed unconsciously, our old patterns will simply reemerge. We inevitably will slip back to our old way of being.
So the first of the reasons we fail to achieve our corporate goals is that we often attempt to implement them without following the best practices of change management. If a business is to grow and develop, it must consciously evaluate its failed goals against these current best practices. Anything less is likely to teach the culture an unintended lesson that ultimately will sabotage its future efforts. But even adhering to all of the accepted best practices of change management will not guarantee that all of our goals will be achieved. There will always be external effects that cannot be anticipated.
Excerpt from Chapter 6 of “Corporate Caterpillars: How to Grow Wings” by Ron. J. West. For more information, visit corporatecaterpillars.com
Ron J. West has a passion for lifelong learning in the personal and corporate transformation fields. After graduating from the University of Westminster, West earned his Master’s from Brunel University in West London. A results-focused executive consultant and corporate transformation expert with more than 25 years of C-level experience, West since has dedicated his life to assisting corporations and individuals in Europe and North America. He is the author of “Corporate Caterpillars: How to Grow Wings.”
