Making Change Happen

All organisations are engaged in cycles of change, continually implementing initiatives of varying size to improve performance. These initiatives are often subject to the heightened pressures of maximising benefits in the shortest possible timeframes.

Unfortunately, change initiatives are rarely deemed to be a complete success. For those involved the frustrations are all too familiar:

‘It is taking too long to implement’ ‘
‘The business does not own the solution’
‘The final solution is not what we intended – it has been diluted’
‘The design is no longer appropriate – it does not fit the business as it stands today’
‘A lot of rework had to be done because the right decisions weren’t made at the right time’
‘We are finding it difficult to embed the change into the organisation’
‘People are losing focus and their energies are being attracted elsewhere’
‘The level of benefits being realised are much lower than we originally stated’
‘This level of change cannot be sustained’
‘People don’t understand what we are trying to deliver’
‘There is a real lack of sponsorship’
‘We have tried this before and it failed’
‘How much more change can we handle’
‘We need to make decisions and make them right now’
‘We are struggling to deliver business as usual and implement these changes at the same time’

Change is never easy to design and embed into an organisation. This is why the role of external consultants can be critical – they should help remove these frustrations. Unfortunately, this is not always the case because change initiatives are typically conducted in the same linear, sequential manner.