Thriving in the Age of Disruption

“A more rapid and complex changing environment, including what is now called disruptive change, may not be just one factor, but the central force, shaping the challenges that organizations and people face nowadays.”

???????????? John P. Kotter, Professor of Leadership Emeritus, Harvard Business School

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, and the magnitude of those changes continues to increase, organizations that are change agile will have a distinct competitive advantage over those organizations that can’t adapt quickly.?

Change is everywhere, and organizations must adapt to survive.? I’m talking about industry changes, geopolitical changes, economic changes, changes in customer expectations, technology changes, workforce changes, and the list goes on.? ?

And here is a scary statistic first reported by research from the consulting firm McKinsey and later backed up by others:? Seventy percent of all organizational change initiatives fail to meet their intended objectives.? Yes, you read that correctly – SEVENTY PERCENT fail.?

But an analysis of the causes behind the failures is even more surprising.? Postmortem assessment of failed change initiatives reveals that the strategies put in place to address disruptive change were good strategies.? So, what happened?

It can be summed up in this simple statement: “Organizations don’t change, people do.”? Let me explain further.

All change has two components to it.? One is the structural event itself.? This includes things such as new technology that needs to be adopted, new regulatory requirements that need to be complied with, new operating systems that must be implemented, new processes and procedures to be followed, and company growth that must be adapted to.?

The postmortem research demonstrated that the strategies companies had in place to address this structural component of change were largely solid and should have been effective.

It was the second component of change where organizations fell very short:? Addressing the neuropsychological response people had to implementing those strategies.? This includes the beliefs people formed about the change and the strategies being implemented.? These beliefs create emotions that drive behavior that either resisted the change or supported it.?

Brain imaging technology has clearly shown that human's actions are driven more by their emotional systems than their logical thinking systems.? This means leaders wanting change strategies to be implemented as expected must ensure their teams have the correct set of beliefs about those strategies to create the right emotions to drive supportive actions.? ?

This requires much more than just telling people what strategies to implement and training them on executing those strategies.? It means also doing these four things:

1. Providing clear communication about the reasons for the change and their importance for them, their team, and their organization.
2. Using great listening skills to fully understand concerns their people have about implementing the required strategies.
3. Asking the right questions to prompt input from their team on how to address those concerns. ?
4. Finally, it requires confident and assertive direction to be sure the plan generated through this collaboration is followed.?

?Include these four components in your next change initiative to maximize the potential for success.

If you would like more on this topic, Chapter Seven in my book is all about optimizing change agility and goes into more detail about how and when to implement each of these four steps.? Get it here on Amazon:

Ignite Your Leadership: The Power Of Neuropsychology To Optimize Team Performance: Swavely, Steve: 9781957651392: Amazon.com : Books

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