Tools are for fools?
André Baken
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André Baken
Listener | Innovation Catalyst | Strategic Transformation Guide | Truth-Teller | 19,629,794 Views Content Creator
- Too many people take what we have as Change Management toolsets for granted. After 40 years in the trenches, I prefer to optimistically evaluate them as they come along over time and adjust to the practice. Same with PROSCI or the now in vogue "Agile" movement for example. They will evolve or fade away as so many other tool sets have done over the decades.
- Thousands of consultants, like me, are very willing to present our tools as the ultimate solution for solid enterprise transformation and people transition management, because it's our bread & butter and we all know that companies are still tool focussed instead of buying experience and outcome based knowledge.
- The statistics on success and failure rates of projects tell us the truth about tools. Over decades success rate is stuck around 30%! It means that all the tools invented and introduced during all these decades, did not deliver any significant improvements to outcomes. Does that mean they are all bad?
- If you analyze in depth project outcomes over the years, and especially focus on those that do deliver, you will find time after time that success comes from a combination of strong leadership (willing to act and adjust, also upon own management) in combination with experienced, creative and out-of-the-box thinking consultants (they appear when leadership is strong), who don't really care about the tools, and are focussed on the situational outcomes. They will use any tool, any suitable moment, that they know will "do the trick" for the found challenges. The combination of strong leaders and creative experienced consulting makes projects really deliver, as opposed to weak leadership and tool focussed consultancy.
- The current speed of transformation accelerates brutally the need for real outcomes. In other words, for much stronger transformational leadership, able to create "overnight" the cultural tipping point most organisations need to stay in the game. It will bring along the need for decisions never made before, like substituting massively untrainable management (including C-level if needed), stop "delegating" leadership in Change Champions, while introducing "strange tools" like emotional intelligence workouts, mind setting, working with horses or applying osteopathy-on-site- (body and mind are one), for example. These are all bio- and neuroscience based tools that are now only scratching the surface. Yet these tools, by many still seen as stuff for fools, are the "new generation", if adopted fast by true leaders who understand the relationship between fear and actions, will help their enterprises generate the much needed cultural tipping point towards transformation.