In this article we examine what makes change fail and why people resist change. Digging in Peter Senge quite famously said that people don’t resist change; they resist being changed. Most of us would know what it feels like to dig our heels in when someone tries to make us change against our will. Resistance to change occupies a fairly prominent position in the minds of managers who are charged with moving their teams from an ‘old normal’ [...]
This article considers change readiness and structural change. Risky business Structural change can be risky business. That's why change readiness is so important. Kevin Voigt of CNN estimates the failure rate of changes like mergers to be as high as 90%. The Deloitte Review (Issue 6, 2010) is less pessimistic – they put the failure rate at an even 50%. Either way, there is too much room for trouble. The Deloitte Review conducted an in-depth review of merger performance [...]
The world is full of patterns. Sometimes they are irregular, like the edges of coastlines. They can mirror Mr Miyagi's famous saying, "same, but different" - like snowflakes are the same, but each one is different and unique. In the video above, there are patterns to the movement of people and traffic across this busy Tokyo intersection. People and traffic move in rhythmic pulses, like blood moves around our body. These patterns not only help describe what's going [...]
I am sometimes asked whether change fitness is a similar concept to resilience. Resilience is defined as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance, re-organise, and keep functioning in much the same way as before”. Think about that for a moment: “in much the same way as before”. Does that sound like change? In one sense, it doesn’t. After all, if you keep going “in much the same way as before”, you’re never going to create anything [...]
Every year organisations large and small spend lots of time and money dealing with change. Not because they particularly want to, but because they have to to stay ahead of the game and ahead of the competition. If you’re in business you can’t afford to struggle with change. Technology, social change, and market dynamics all impact your operations. When competitors become more adaptable and agile than you, they will out-compete you. To be successful and grow you have [...]