6 reasons why organizational change fails

Bill McCarthy of Penna consultants addresses six common reasons why organizational C. fails and suggests an approach that focuses on people within a “before, during and after” timeframe.
McCarthy's 6 reasons why organizational C. fails are:

1. People planning comes last (Organizations plan the financials, the operations, the marketing and selling, but few plan the people dimension).
2. The role of managers is disregarded (while they are pivotal for winning hearts and minds)
3. Communication fails to win hearts and minds (too mechanical; leaders' passion and the vision for the future not communicated)
4. Individual agendas are ignored (failing to address the “what’s in it for me?” agenda)
5. Engagement isn’t measured (You’re then unclear about the support they need until it’s too late and productivity and profitability already suffer)
6. Lack of a project manager (Inadequate project M.)

In order to deal with these frequently made mistakes, McCarthy suggests an organizational C. approach with a focus on people within a “before, during and after” timeframe in three layers (levels) of activity: the organization as an entity, the managers; and the individuals.

The rest of McCarthy's (bill.mccarthy@e-penna.com) article can be found in Strategic HR Review (Volume 4 Issue 1 November/December 2004).

Organizational Development

An article by Diane Moody and Andy Smith on organizational development in a magazine called Personnel Today contains some useful clues on how the CM and the Human Resources function are related and should work together.

While its execution is often complex, the principles of organizational Development (OD) are fairly straight-forward: it is a planned, organization-wide approach to improving organizational effectiveness. There are, however, some important assumptions that underpin the concept.

History of organizational development

OD is informed by a set of humanistic values and beliefs about the potential of people and organizations to develop and grow. It involves C. through people and improvements to build future capability. It is concerned with the health and well-being of people at work and is rooted in a sound theoretical and research base, starting with people such as Lewin, Trist and Banforth and the Hawthorne experiments.

The term 'organization development' was actually coined in the 1950s, by McGregor and Beckhard, who introduced new team structures promoting higher levels of upward decision-making.

More recently, new approaches such as Real-Time Strategic C. (Jacobs) and Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperider) have come to the fore. These put an emphasis on finding new ways of engaging more people in dealing with the changes faced by their organization through dialogue and conversation.

Where does organizational development belong?

Many OD practitioners have a Human Resources background. However, there is a trend towards moving OD practice out of HR and bringing it alongside functions such as strategy or business development. Professional OD programmes are increasingly attracting practitioners from a range of backgrounds. Sometimes participants bring business process or quality M. experience, after realizing they need to balance their technical knowledge with a deeper awareness of the human responses to C. and transformation.

Sometimes the OD team is drawn from within the business, with people selected for their operational rather than OD skills and their commitment to improving the organization. Increasingly, organizations are using large-scale C. processes, where the whole organization gets together, and all staff are involved in creating and agreeing C. decisions. These latest develop-ments reflect values central to OD practice engagement, participation and democracy.

The article reminded me I need to schedule a meeting with the guys from HR to discuss how they can support us. Who has experiences to share on working with HR on C. efforts? Did it work for you?

Power of holding hands

I was sitting on a beach one summer day , watching two children , a boy and a girl,
playing in the sand.

They were hard at work building an elaborate sandcastle by the water's edge,with gates and towers and moats and internal passages.

Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand.

I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard
work. But they surprised me. Instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing
and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle.

I realised that they had taught me an important lesson.

All the things in our lives , all the complicated structures we spent so much time and energy
creating , are built on sand. Only our relationships to other people endure.

Sooner or later , the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up.

When that happens , only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh….