The Challenge of Change in the Government

We adore change - as long as the change is made by other person and we don't have to change ourselves.

I speak frequently on the subject of "Change". Whenever I ask the audience: "Is Change inevitable?" or "Is Change good for us?", the response is almost unilaterally that Change is here to stay. People in the audience always nod their head in agreement when I mention that in today's world - "Change is the only constant".

But when I talk about the change that is washing up on their organizational shores, they become slightly more serious, and even become quiet. In an organization, change could manifest in several forms – embracing a new structure, process or policies, adopting new technologies, moving operations to a new geographic location or completely realigning your product portfolio.

The absence of change could lead to organizational obsolescence and ultimately may be to its demise, and on the other hand, the implementation of change if not done properly could lead to organizational disintegration. Neither of the above scenarios – the death of the organization or its disintegration is desirable. These options could be avoided and a seamless change in an organization could be implemented by following some of the guiding principles of leading organizational change. 

Change fails more often than it succeeds.

According to the Change management guru - John Kotter, it fails more than 70% of the time. The three top reasons that change fails: Too much complacency, lack of vision and absence of leadership thrust. I have been advising a lot of organizations on managing change. The best of the organizations understand the need to manage change. They plan and more importantly devote time and resources to manage the process of change. The worst plunge into it, and then much later through the implementation realize that the change effort isn't going anywhere. But then more often than not it's too late to salvage the situation, and end up losing a great opportunity.

I am currently supporting a change management effort for a massive digital transformation for one of the high performing ministries in the government. The good thing is that Change Management has been included as an integral part of the technical project management. Rather than coming at the end of the project, this is running concurrently with the project. Its early days to predict the success of the change management, but what can be said confidently is that the approach is right. Our challenge is to draw out the leadership to lead this effort and communicate with the stakeholders about the need for change.

The most redeeming feature is that the government has realized that the huge resources being put to such initiatives like digital transformation can only be optimally harnessed if they are supported by a well designed and structured change management process.