Breakthrough Thinking for change: Soft skills with hard outcomes

Many business leaders believe change is a difficult process.

Is that why ‘70% of all transformation efforts fail’?

We’d say no.

Cast your mind back to the last time you tried to create a lasting change in your organisation. As a leader, I'd bet you don’t have to think that far into the past - change is constant in business.

How did it go?

For most leaders the answer is – “As well as could be expected.”

No doubt the structure behind the change was painstakingly aligned to the strategy. No doubt there was much well-planned action taken in the creation of processes to be sure of successful adoption. No doubt communication around it was meticulously crafted and the timing impeccable. Just to make sure, there were also meetings about meetings and artistically crafted charts and templates to best direct others in how to navigate the choppy waters of change and bring people along with them.

"We got through it."

 The thing is this, despite all this effort, as business leaders if we believe that the process of change is hard, our expectation is usually that the organisation survives the change. And our approach reflects this - we try to control, order and predict outcomes in the best way we know how. We usually do our best to make sure everyone affected by the change is ‘informed’, assuming that the availability of this information will go a long way toward success.

As leaders, we hope that through adequate processes such as communications, people will accept the change. We hope that the people will perform better than before because of the processes we put in place to manage the change.

But hope is not a course of action. And people are not processes.

Here at AB we know from experience that the most technically well executed change programs can fail, not because of the processes used to implement them, but because of the mindset of the people who are depended upon to make the change successful. And the truth is most business leaders focused on creating change fail to address this in their planning.

Lasting change?

Studies suggest that although 75% of companies are transforming their organisations, there is only a 10% rate of success in transformations where clients do not have holistic programs* that address mindset.

The 'fluffy' stuff

Our friends in HR also recognize and acknowledge that the mindset of people is the key to success. They know that the (secret) thoughts, opinions and concerns people have around change can often derail the best thought out change programs. 

Many of our HR colleagues find that their assertions around this are written off. That mindset is seen as ‘fluffy’, categorized as ‘soft skills’ and not intrinsic to the success of change in that they are not considered to yield bottom line outcomes. Sadly this is why we so regularly hear of the first cuts to development budgets being made in this area.

Mindset matters

We know that uncovering and shifting the potentially negative mindsets of your people in relation to change is crucial if you are determined to make change happen. That getting at the Little Voice in the back of their heads and having them speak their concerns to you is critical. This way you can address them and move forward swiftly with your people feeling like they are part of driving the change – something which research says contributes toward a 71% success rate of change programs.

In fact, one of our clients seeking to create a culture change in their organisation experienced this first hand, when their people, empowered by a Breakthrough approach to their own mindset, delivered a stellar result of ￡7 million in gross profit during a change program with us in the first 9 months! Add to this the bonus of staff development (often resulting in promotion) – after the first year attendees were responsible for 54% of UK business, as well as the extremely positive impact the program had on staff retention - up to 87% (think of the cost savings on recruitment and training), and you’re starting to collate some fairly chunky bottom line figures - Soft skills with hard outcomes!

Still think mindset is 'fluffy' stuff?

*·      Mckinsey Quarterly Transformation Executive Survey 2008