Why the Packaged Change Programs work in some Organisations and not others

The change programs are new packages of parts of long-established generic management processes. Let me illustrate that statement by using Continuous Improvement (CI) as an example. CI stresses the importance of customer focus, internal customer supplier relationships, process management and control, empowered work teams and visionary leadership. All of these strategies are present in established processes for strategic or business planning, organisational and job re-design, cultural change and performance management. There are however other parts of these generic processes that are not included in Continuous Improvement. Because the change programs are sold as standardised packages, they assume (wrongly) that the program is equally suitable for all organisations and prescribe standardised procedures for implementation, which they assume, will be suitable for use in all organisations. Where the change programs fail, it is because one or more of these assumptions is not true for the organisation in question. Let me compare two organisations I have worked with who have had Continuous Improvement Programs in place – one was successful, the other unsuccessful. On investigation, I found that the organisation in which it was successful had introduced Continuous Improvement because customer dissatisfaction with product quality was threatening the company’s success. It was the CEOs idea to introduce it, and he eagerly took on the leadership role. Production employees had been complaining that if they had more control over their processes they could solve their quality problems. In other words, the company was a perfect candidate for Continuous Improvement. By contrast, the organisation in which it was not successful, introduced it to generally improve performance. Attempts at market focus first raised customer expectations but failure to deliver created dissatisfaction. Efforts to ‘empower’ production teams did little more than confuse and demotivate production workers. What the program failed to recognise was that customers had been satisfied with the products they were getting before CI was introduced, that the company’s problems were due to a high cost structure, and that the production workers were comfortable with an authoritarian management style. I have seen similarly disastrous results when Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) was introduced. BPR focuses on processes that run across organisational boundaries. It critically reviews the contribution made by each unit to these processes and this review may result in radical downsizing of the organisation. When massive inefficiencies across the organisations are actually the cause of poor organisational performance this radical restructuring may be justified. In the case I saw, however, it resulted in the downsizing of strategy development units, which were difficult to justify on the short-term efficiency criteria used by the review. This caused the organisation lose its strategic focus. Another disastrous impact was the demotivating effect it had on people who survived the restructure. Change Management Tips that will improve the Performance of Your Organisation What it means to be Change-ready How to Make your Organisation Change-ready For further assistance visit the Change & Perform website or contact the Principal, Kerry Feldman