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In this sixth post, based on Nick Anderson's book, Focusing Change to Win, we highlight contributions from 1072 Business Leaders. This post gives some of the key findings on how they see change impacting effective and ineffective organizations.  They were asked to distinguish between thriving organizations as opposed to those that just get by - surviving organizations.

I just finished reading my copy of 2014 Pulse of the Profession® by the Project Management Institute (PMI).   This year’s edition is subtitled “The High Cost of Low Performance.” Mulling over the content, it struck us that as a company whose offering is based on driving organization change through project delivery, we should take a fresh look at how we interact with our customers.  Further, as we looked at the offering, could the various delivery models improve our customers’ performance and therefore reduce cost and improve profitability?

The table below reflects the results of our assessment.  We focused on four delivery approaches based on our clients’ requirements to deliver change in the short term and on the need to improve project performance strategically for the long haul. 

In this fifth post, based on Nick Anderson's book, Focusing Change to Win, we highlight contributions from 1072 Business Leaders on The Why and What of Change. This post gives some of the key findings on how change can be used to foster competitive success, including some useful tips from the book. 

In this fourth post, based on Nick Anderson's book, Focusing Change to Win, we highlight contributions from 1072 Business Leaders on The Why and What of Change. The post gives some of the key findings on measuring change and a sample of useful tips from the book.

In this third post, based on Nick Anderson's book, Focusing Change to Win, we highlight contributions from 1072 Business Leaders on The Why and What of Change. The post gives some of the key findings on change resistance and a sample of useful tips from the book.

In this second post, based on Nick Anderson's book, Focusing Change to Win, we highlight contributions from 1072 Business Leaders on The Why and What of Change. The post gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips from the book.  We take an in-depth look at how our contributors improve their chances of thriving through change, by communicating in ways that build trust and engage people. For these contributors, Communication must constantly focus and connect the What of Change with the Why of Changing.

This is the first in a series of book highlights from Focusing Change To Win.  This deeply insightful manual for change leadership features the collective wisdom of 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants. These contributions on managing change come from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors. In this series of nine articles, we will provide key findings and useful tips. 

In my mangled use of the quote on winning most often attributed to Vince Lombardi¹, I am making the point that for all the focus on other areas of the change process, only realization of the business case really counts.  Most new businesses fail as do most change projects, even if they get through deployment; they fail to deliver expected value.   

Ideally, your approach to change would be personal!  You make sure your team members buy into it, own it, implement it, and are rewarded for it in their work relationships. Yet, today we still see many leaders using Top-Down Change as their default approach without considering the impact on productive relationships and their ability to respond to the next change.

Introduction

In our last blog, Tracking Expectation Alignment to Avoid IT Project Failure, Nick discussed the impact misalignment can have on project success.  During many consulting engagements, we identified that organizational misalignment is a major factor in organizations and individuals failing to achieve goals.

This changed our focus to align people’s expectations first, before designing, learning, coaching etc. Consequently, this approach has helped clients add millions to the bottom line, bring projects in on time, and successfully enable value added technology insertion.

In this blog we want to build on that theme.   Many change projects were planned in response to the economy, yet almost half of the respondents to our and many other surveys indicate that a significant number of change projects failed to meet their stated goals.

We have learned that anticipating and managing misalignment goes to the root of building successful change. And so the theme of this blog, Managing Alignment Challenges -- so that you can increase the odds that the change you’re planning will achieve its desired results.

Today, we want to focus on people alignment.  We recognize there are other important components of successful change, including alignment of resources with strategy.  It’s a big subject. But one thing is for sure – Change has to be personal before it can be organizational.