Ten Pitfalls to Avoid to Successfully Lead Change

Hello!

I hope that you are safe and well. Today is a very exciting day because we are continuing our 4-part series of Transformational Change! This is obviously a monumental moment whereas the entire world is amid the transformation.

We kicked off our 4-part series of Transformational Change with Part One, Individual Transition & Change. Last week, we addressed Part Two, Steps to develop an Effective Change Leadership Strategy.

Today, we will address the Ten Pitfalls to Avoid to Successfully Lead Change.

Next week and lastly, we will address, The Ways to Increase Change Maturity Throughout your Organization.

Now, let us tackle the pitfalls that your organization should avoid in order to successfully lead change.

1. Decision-making taking too long. If your organization takes a long time to make decisions this is a challenge for transformational change. If there is a culture of indecision this can serve as a long-term obstacle to change because you may not be able to decide what to do. Somewhat self-explanatory, but this is very real in many organizations.
2. Conflicting/ Unclear Prioritization. If there is a disconnect, especially among C-Suite leadership regarding what the organization’s priorities should be then it is going to be difficult to align the leadership around the desired transformation. Firstly, prioritization must be aligned among leadership in order to make a transformation happen in a successful and orderly manner.
3. The environment is highly siloed. Siloes are organizational obstacles. They are success killers. On any given day, siloes rob organizations of creativity, innovation, and efficiencies. Transformation efforts are no different. It is difficult to accomplish successful transformations that are even more sophisticated and difficult than day-to-day achievement. Therefore, very siloed organizations will, indeed, face difficulty in making transformations happen successfully.
4. Risk-Averse Cultures, go without saying, are going to have a hard time with transformation. Transformations carry a significant amount of unknown and lack of predictability. The less predictability, the more risk involved. While risk-averse organizations will want to be better. They may risk the comfort needed to make the leaps that will need to be made in a truly transformational change. They may be able to make incremental changes. However, transformational change will be exceedingly difficult, maybe even painful for risk-averse organizations.
5. Weak Technology Infrastructure is often an obstacle in transformation because organizations do not initially realize that their current technology does not support the change that they want. For example, an organization may want to use cutting-edge software, however, their employees, mainly have outdated hardware/ computers. This is a reminder that all elements of an organization must be analyzed to make a transformational change happens.
6. Lack of Needed Skillsets. Sometimes organizations will reach for the stars in transformation only to realize that they do not have the right skill sets in-house to make the transformation happen successfully. Sure, training is available. However, training may not be sufficient in the amount of time that is allotted to make the change happen. Sometimes your staff will need to be augmented with the right skillsets to make the change happen.
7. Inconsistent Business Processes. When you do not have standardized processes, it is difficult to build an effective and efficient roadmap for transformation. It is going to be difficult to give instructions that everyone understands if there is a lack of consistency in what the team is doing. You first want to standardize your business processes so that your organization will be able to receive instruction and planning in a consistent manner that applies to everyone.
8. Lack of Sufficient Budget. Many times, organizations know what they want and know what they want to pay. However, they do not accept the fact that what they want to pay will not get what they want. In that instance, a decision needs to be made. They need to either limit the scope of the transformation or increase the budget.
9. Lack of Leadership Support. There is a great rave for bottom-up change. Though controversial, I am admittedly a skeptic of this commonly being the answer. Can change happen from the bottom? Absolutely! Can it have long-term success? Yes. Is it likely to have long-term success? Absolutely not! Often when change starts at the bottom, it can make some progress when done by highly influential team members. However, when leadership support is not gained early on, we often see a waste of time and resources. Oftentimes, we see hundreds, if not thousands of effort hours spent for the effort to be shut down or even worse ignored until death by leadership. Therefore, any transformation, to be successful is going to need leadership support. Leadership support is usually needed for encouraging participation and engagement. Leadership support is needed for financial investment.
10. Lack of Sufficient Desire is Number Ten. Similarly, to lack of leadership support, a lack of sufficient desire among team members will lead to the death of a transformational change. Yes, a few right people can make a transformational change happen. However, if there are not enough of those right people who have the right influence, the right investment, the right expertise to make it happen then it will not happen. Therefore, it is especially important to educate the organization on the reasons they should desire transformational change. You do this by understanding the benefits of the change and sharing them. You should share them in a specific way that shows how everyone will benefit, respectively. Some benefits will be different for different stakeholders and organization members. Therefore, that should be communicated.

If you know a colleague or a friend, with whom this may benefit please share through e-mail or social media.

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