In a 2009 survey of managers in over 300 British organizations LESS THAN 3 per cent of them said they always managed change successfully.

These are the main reasons why change initiatives failed:

The majority of British Managers are unskilled and uneducated in driving a change initiative forward.

They are too bound into short-term problem solving, effecting cost reductions and seeking ways of boosting efficiency. These become the reactive factors that drive the need for change.

They take a process or logistics approach to handling change and usually ignore completely the psychological needs of their employees.

They rely on external help, ignoring the fact that change is best handled by people who work in the organization.

The average employee fears anything that impacts on his or her current levels of self-competency.

How can we be so unsuccessful at handling change?

The majority of British managers interviewed appeared to be unskilled and often poorly educated in handling change. They lacked know-how about the psychological aspects of change but most could handle the logistics of change well. These managers are not atypical. This lack of understanding about meeting the psychological needs of their employees, coupled with change only being considered as a short-term tactic (used to solve the latest set of problems and inefficiencies or as a means of effecting cost reductions), often resulted in change initiatives failing to give the desired results.

There was a global agreement in the survey sample that change, generally speaking, should be avoided and changes should only be made when the need to change anything becomes unavoidable. Change in the private sector was regarded as a good thing if it related to increasing hot profits, generating more immediate sales and rapidly reducing costs; the focus of change was mainly on rapidly reducing costs.

In the public sector the main interest in change was on increasing efficiency but the timescale was less of an issue than in the private sector and the public sector managers claimed to consult more with employees over planned change. Even so, change implantations did not have a better success rate in the public sector.

Of course, the “blame” for this state of affairs does not rest solely on the shoulders of management. Stakeholders in any organization are also reluctant to welcome change when things are going well. When the climate changes and there is a downturn, stakeholders demand better results, which, in turn, means management seek changes that better performance as a short-term fix. The need for change is ‘thrust upon them.'

Employees often show both a collective and individual reluctance to accept change. ‘If things work they are best left alone,' is a British characteristic. The employee often derives a lot of his or her personal confidence (and sometimes their personal identity) from competence in the job. Changes in the way things are done may undermine this good feeling until competence in a new area has been established. Reluctance to welcome changes can be a direct result of fearing that one will be viewed as incompetent or lacking in self-confidence. Consequently, people who gain their “personal sense of meaning and purpose” from the job they do, face an identity crisis if change means they are no longer viewed as absolutely competent even during a transition period. New competencies have to be mastered, which goes hand-in-hand with the associated concerns that the new competencies may not be masterable in certain situations. The uncertainty about becoming competent in a new way of working can lead to varying degrees of anxiety. This can manifest itself in a number of ways including outright or covert resistance to change. Employees also identify major change as being synonymous with an organization failing and as a potential threat to job security.

Overall, change is treated with scepticism and suspicion, as something that should only be considered when there is no other escape hatch open and the situation becomes so dire that changes have to be made. Employees usually only welcome change when there is some direct benefit to them, such as, making their work easier or their pay packets heavier. To read the complete White Paper on Change:

Please contact us to request a free copy of: "The White Paper on Change." © 2009 21st Century View Limited. Revised edition 2010: A 21st century view of change.



The Phantom of the Organization©: Revisiting a discussion paper on change wreckers within the organization. First published in 2002 by James Mandeville as a 21st Century View of change. All Rights Reserved

Abstract:

An organization is nothing more complex than a group of people working together for mutual benefit with the common aim of ensuring the organization carries on. Organizations are not created perfect and they do not evolve in a sublime way. Organizations have many imperfections, which is one of the reasons why changing anything is difficult and is so prone to fail. Although everyone in the organization knows it is not perfect, they try to maintain a perfect organizational face for the benefit of those external to the organization. They do this to create an air of stability and to generate confidence, loyalty and trust in the organization.

Whatever the public face of the organization, the reality within the organization is always another story. No organization is perfect or always runs smoothly and it never will - however successful the organization might be. There is a phantom in every organization and if any change is to take place in the organization the phantom has to be recognised, understood and dealt with. The question being – how?

An organization has a public face and a private face:

The public face is the way an organization is projected through its public image via marketing and PR. The public face is the way the organization as an entity would like the world to perceive it – as a well run, happy, successful operation. The private face is the internal one – where communications are not always the best, where systems do not always run smoothly, where internal politics reign, where trust becomes an issue and degrees of personal contentment fluctuate. The private face is the reality of the organization, where harmony and delight are not always an everyday event. When considering change, however, even this is not the full picture.

Every organization has another side to it. This is a slightly more sinister apparition, a phantom, which can dog everyday events and even gnaw away at the organization's fabric. The phantom is not intrinsically bad, it can be good or bad but there are no rules of conduct governing how the phantom behaves; no established protocols.

The Phantom often disrupts the business
Sometimes this is beneficial but the realities of the phantom are not formally controllable. When it comes to managing any aspect of change, the phantom will arise. It manifests itself in various ways:

Through politics
Internal politics do not serve the organization; they serve the individuals engaged in them. Unfettered, the phantom of internal politics is negative, leading to a breakdown in communications, often subtly (the most insidious version) and causing infighting at all levels. Individuals keep valuable knowledge to themselves and do not share it with those who need to know in order to protect themselves, increase their “value” or to become more “powerful.” They cling on to their held-beliefs and do not hear others. Withholding knowledge is a common covert method of resisting change.

Lowering morale and motivation
Personal opinions, emotional deductions, use of sophisms, negative evaluative beliefs and outright hostility – all of these morale and motivation-battering attributes of the phantom grind people down, wastes their energy and ultimately, become a major reason why people leave an organization. They may not even be able to define it; they just feel “there is a bad or intolerable atmosphere” and they can't stand working in the organization any longer.

This is not the end of the wicked phantom story! But it's already enough to sap the life-force out of a change initiative and waste time and effort better spent on growing the business and moving it forward.

Distortions
Good governance of the organization allows for people to grow, to express themselves and to feel valuable enough so they contribute freely. For an organization to mature, diverse individual views should be allowed to flourish. However, the renegade, the way-out, the stubborn, the insensitive and insincere as well as the downright selfish individual is not a force for good and they upset and distract those who generate value as team players. Trust and loyalty issues are usually covert and they belong here. One of the most destructive devices against change is the phrase, “I wouldn't trust that/him/her.” Sometimes left hanging, sometimes “backed” by unsubstantiated facts, sophisms, negative evaluative beliefs – trust and loyalty come under attack. The phantom of the organization strikes again.

Informal Social Systems
From a few people getting together after work, the “Grapevine,” texting and emails, to the outlawed smokers huddled on the pavement (soon to be huddled five blocks down the street); there are many informal social groups that will be expressing their views about the organisation and the key players. New phantom mindsets spring up, not based on solid, logical debate or reasonable argument in the office and not brainstormed in management meetings or on development courses, the output is rarely a brilliant new business idea – the phantom is at work. Informal groups interact, because group members of one informal group also belong to other informal groups and the cynical phantom is doing well spreading dissent and even alarm on a wider scale. If opposition to change is the target of the phantom of dissent, try getting a grip on that!

Short circuits
Even in the most regulated industries, people find ways around existing protocols, if they didn't, nothing would get done. Deny it if you want but let's get real, it's a fact of life. In fact, if everyone followed all procedures to the letter, most organisations would probably grind to a halt. When all goes well – fine – if things don't go well then retribution can be backed up by quoting procedures and rules. It's neat and lets management off the hook for not knowing what is going on or a scapegoat can quickly be found and a sacrifice duly made to appease those in charge acting as warning to others who may err. The phantom is the tiny voice of conviction that protocol can be broken and it is necessary to do it. The phantom convinces one that the “short circuit” is actually now the norm, everyone does it. What does this tell us? Nothing is perfect and human nature is designed to minimise effort in the desire to achieve a result. If a proposed change doesn't make life easier or the wallet heavier, the phantom will have something to say about it.

Competition
The phantom of the organization knows no boundaries. One tiny chink in your corporate armour and the phantom is at play, reflected in everything from internal documents to comment in the national press. Your results show a downturn, just a glitch in the overall scheme of things but people talk and so do phantoms. Soon, the phantoms in your competitor's organizations are at work and the state of your business is the subject. If your competitors get wind you are contemplating a major change the phantoms watch, evaluate, conjecture, scheme and this is not a charitable performance, they are out to get you. Let's not be paranoid about this, just realise your competitors would dearly like to see your organization vaporize, turn your organization's noble history into an anecdote. There is nothing a competitor's phantom enjoys more. (Actually, nothing a competitor enjoys more!)

Good Phantom days
People get inspired and the fickle phantom joins the inspired bandwagon and starts working towards the cohesive aims of the organization.

The phantom can rationalize: “Maybe this isn't going to be so bad after all.”

The phantom can be opportunistic: “If we go along with this, then we can get something in return…”

The phantom can be constructive: “It's not a bad idea but could work better if we…”

Identifying the phantoms isn't easy but once they are isolated and put into quarantine they can be schooled to work for the good of the organisation.



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