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Organizations today adopt several methods to grow their revenues. In the process they follow a combination of organic and inorganic routes.
Some of the initiatives involve those like mergers, reorganizations, leadership changes and cultural shifts. Many times we see that some of these initiatives fail and they fail miserably. The failure gives a huge setback to the organization and it becomes a discouragement factor for it to adopt more initiatives. The resultant is that the business does not progress and the management crumbles under their shareholder’s pressure.
Management consulting firms are always challenged to help their customers manage change and transitions and improve results in a world of continuous flux.
Many change initiatives seem to cost too much, take too long and fail to meet their objectives. This is because the improvement initiative is ‘change-heavy’ and ‘transition-light’. Change and transition are different processes and a separate focus on each is necessary if the client is to achieve any significant progress.
Simply put; ‘change’ is a shift in the externals of any situation: a new team, new market, new product, new efficiency norms, setting up a new program etc. By contrast, ‘transition’ is the mental and emotional transformation that people must undergo to give up old arrangements and embrace new ones.
Transition has three phases: (a) Closure of old arrangements, (b) Orientation phase and (c) Adoption phase for a new beginning. Organizations need to deal with each of these phases in a focused manner or else the proposed change will just be a rearrangement of the existing methods.
In such cases, there is a tendency to start over again, add more resources at the problem, or replace the original team of consultants. In all such cases, the change exceeds the time and cost estimates and almost invariably, the change don’t do what it is supposed to do. We have many such examples of mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, joint ventures or outsourcing projects that were supposed to save tons of money, but failed to meet the promised P&L goals.
Managing change is very different from managing the actual transition.
(a) Change is the way things will be different, and transition is how you get people through those three phases to make the change work.
(b) Change is made up of a sequence of events, while transition is an on-going process.
(c) Change is visible and tangible, while transition is supposedly to take inside of people.
(d) Change can happen quickly, but transition takes a longer period – perhaps weeks or months or even years.
(e) Change can, and usually should be, speeded up. Transition, like any organic process, has its own natural pace.
(f) Change is all about the results that we are plan to achieve; transition is about how to manage things in the path to reach there.
Most often, the consultant’s challenge is to help an organization overcome its past record and perceptions to put a change program on a winning path. For that the consultant needs to assess the “transition readiness” of the client and study the history in terms of what worked earlier and what failed.
The successful and the unsuccessful historical events leave scars on the organization and the people and this defines the areas of priority for consultants to show action upon rather than merely address these areas by theoretical concepts.
Consultants who are assisting clients in their change initiatives are normally more casual about the human side of the change they are trying to bring about. They fail to recognize that new things won’t take root unless people change and change the way they have been doing things till date. Pure explanations do not encourage people to let go of old assumptions, old relationships and old metrics they are used to for getting results.
Very few consultants are actually experts in the entire process – knowing how to help an organization carry out a change, from first concept to final action. But consultants today very well understand that human behavior is by far the most important challenge to tackle if any change initiative has to succeed.
I wished I had this article on my blog way earlier for the benefit of my colleagues and well-wishers who are either entrepreneurs or agents of change.
Nevertheless, I am sure that the insight was always available.
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