The BIG reason why 70% of change efforts fail

The research tells us that up to 70% of efforts to bring about workplace change fail to deliver the expected benefits. What is the reason for this shocking failure rate and why our attempts to bring about organisational change crash and burn? Here is a real-life story from a company I’ve worked at in the past, that illustrates the BIG reason why our change efforts don't deliver.

“Rick Davis” was hired as a maintenance manager at an oil sands plant in Alberta, Canada. He was responsible for a team that was maintaining the facility, where oil was being extracted from the frozen sands of Fort McMurray.

Temperatures plummeted to 40 below zero in the long Fort McMurray winters, where Rick was employed as a maintenance manager.

The trouble at the oil sands plant

The day Rick was hired his boss “Bill Lopez” took him on a tour of the plant and told him, “Standards have slipped around here and I’m expecting you to get the place ship-shape. We need to create a more safety conscious and disciplined culture in the maintenance team – fast!”

Bill explained to Rick the urgent need to make change happen at the plant and to improve the safety and quality metrics.

What Rick did next

Rick got to work, eager to please his boss and to make a success of the new role. He observed the workers and found that they seemed to be ignoring the quality and safety regulations. He examined the data and discovered an increasing number of serious safety incidents and worryingly, that a worker in his team had been badly injured in a recent fall from a high platform.

Rick decided to move rapidly to a solution to create a more disciplined and safety conscious culture. He hired a new Quality Manager and an experienced Safety Rep; he implemented a new management system for tracking and reporting on quality and safety issues; and he developed a clear set of work procedures that were cascaded to the supervisors to implement.

Rick implemented system and policy changes designed to manage and control the work.

The result = no change

Despite Rick’s best efforts to bring about change, he saw little improvement in the quality and safety KPIs. He was feeling the chill, not just from the sub-zero temperatures at Fort McMurray, but also from the cold reception he was getting from his boss Bill about the glacial progress of the change.

Rick called me, “The boss is on my back about the urgent need for change but people seem to be working around the new systems and processes I’ve introduced. Despite the new work procedures the workers continue to ignore the rules!”

What was really going on at the plant?

So what was Rick missing here? My further conversations and investigations revealed that the issue lay in a deeply embedded pattern that had developed in the culture. There was an unwritten rule between the supervisors and employees: “The rules do not apply to us”. This unspoken agreement was running the team and was leading to the safety breaches and quality issues.

The maintenance workers were in role of “Rule Breakers” who ignored the procedures and regulations. The supervisors were in role of “Condoners” who put few consequences in place for rule-breaking behaviours. I’ve sketched the pattern for you here:

Where had this pattern emerged from?

The undisciplined pattern had emerged from the early days of setting up the maintenance contract in a hostile environment. Workers back then had been required to find workarounds, take shortcuts, and do whatever it took to make things happen. However, this undisciplined behaviour was no longer working optimally at the plant. In fact, Rick knew that this culture was compromising quality and putting people’s lives at risk.

What happened next?

I talked Rick through the findings of my investigation and explained, “You’ve been implementing technical solutions but not addressing the underlying pattern in the culture.” Rick got the message and called a meeting with his supervisors, “We can’t continue with this downward trend in our safety and quality stats. It's your job – not the Quality and Safety team - to maintain the standards around here. Let's figure out how we do this together.” This was the beginning of a conversation with his team to shift to a more disciplined culture at the plant.

Rick reframed the role of the supervisors from “Condoners” of the undisciplined behaviours to “Maintainers” of higher standards.

The big reason for the change failure

The BIG reasons that many change efforts falter is that the leaders fail to see the underlying patterns. They attempt to bring about change by implementing technical solutions, alone. Rick had put new systems, processes, and procedures in place– but he had not seen and addressed the unwritten, co-created rule in the culture. Technical solutions (on their own) will not lead to successful change, unless you break the underlying pattern in the culture.

I would love to hear your views and experiences. Do you agree that technical fixes, on their own, won’t bring about successful workplace change?

Please like, comment or share this article if you found it helpful. I'm passionate about making workplaces better and feel free to follow or connect with me if you are interested in organisational culture. Other related articles that you may find useful are:

What you've been told about culture is wrong: PART 1

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