When Change Isn’t Working

While I’ve written previously about some of the keys to driving successful change - from both a personal and professional perspective - the brutal reality is that many change initiatives fail. This final article in a three-part series is designed to explore what to do when it’s clear that change isn’t working.

I consider myself an optimistic, enthusiastic, “glass half full” kind of leader. It’s been an important attribute throughout my career, especially in my time managing large go-to-market organizations. I go into any transformation project expecting it to succeed. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. In fact, most change initiatives fail at a rate of almost 70% according to a recent study from BCG Research. So, what do you do when you can see change isn’t working?

Several years ago, we were trying to figure out a new strategy to engage accounts within our industries with highly targeted, personalized campaigns. To do this successfully we had to find a way to segment our customers to deliver a more “account-based” experience. I was excited by what the transformation could mean for the growth of our business. As such, I went into the project with my usual sense of enthusiasm. “This could be a real game changer for us,” is a phrase I uttered more than once, normally met with nodding heads around the room. I also consider myself a good listener, and on this project all I heard was positive feedback. Even the most skeptical members of my team, who make decisions grounded in data and ask “the difficult” questions about why a project could fail, seemed confident.

We launched the project. Fast forward three months and it felt like things weren’t going as planned. We were hearing negative feedback about the program mechanics and about the scale of the project being beyond our capacity. We discounted the feedback and categorized it as folks pushing back on change. Unfortunately, the feedback and issues persisted. ?

In the third quarter of the year, a few folks on my team – folks who were “all in” and did not share concerns about the program during the planning phases - started sharing confidentially that they had doubts about our ability to implement the project from the very beginning. It seemed like they felt uncomfortable sharing things they thought I “needed to hear” because they didn’t think I “wanted to hear them.” They were swept along by my enthusiasm and didn’t want to be a detractor because I was convinced the project would succeed.

Upon learning this new information and talking through the situation in more detail, we concluded that while the project's goal was valid and reinforced, our path to getting there was not ideal. As such, we wrapped up the year and abandoned the approach, reverting to our prior process with a goal of seeking to understand why things didn’t work and establishing how we could accomplish our goal in a different way.

This served as a real "lightbulb" moment for me. People either didn’t want to tell me things I didn’t want to hear, or they believed the project would succeed because of my effusiveness – and subsequently put any doubts to the back of their mind. It made me completely rethink my approach to change, transparency and garnering feedback, and prompted me to put in place some guardrails to help ensure any transformation I tried to enact was as ‘fail-proof’ as possible.? The key items are:

1.??????? Source feedback deliberately

Since that experience, I have become more deliberate in how I get feedback from my teams, encouraging people to share their perspectives – and most importantly, their concerns - in dedicated advice rounds during the planning stages of any transformation project. Different people bring different points of view. It’s critical to create an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing, especially if it means their perspective is different to the decision maker in the room. People need to feel they have psychological safety to share information “we need to hear” as opposed to just sharing information “we want to hear.” Once I hear and understand those perspectives, it’s then on me to dig in and see if the concerns are grounded and need to be addressed.

2.??????? Own your mistakes - and learn from them

At our annual sales conference, a couple of months after this project was curtailed, we hosted an all-hands meeting. In that meeting, we tackled the project head on, highlighting why we chose the strategy we attempted to execute, and, more importantly, why we were not successful. Acknowledging our mistakes – and apologizing – was critical in maintaining and regaining the trust of our teams. People were shocked that we were so transparent in sharing the shortcomings. And in deconstructing the project so rigorously and openly, sourcing feedback from across the organization, we were able to learn lessons that were then applied to our future transformations.

3.??????? Don’t assume failure is a waste of time

While this change initiative didn’t succeed, it was anything but a waste of time. In fact, I would consider it a “discovery.” We learned so much about attitude, process, planning and execution that we carried on to future transformations. We were also able to leverage much of the effort into a project designed to achieve the same goal but grounded in different foundational data. That project succeeded, and eventually became the highly successful account-based sales and marketing program we operate today.

From WD-40 to the Dyson vacuum, history is lined with successful products and services that only exist because of failure and discovery. It can be a harsh reality to accept, but oftentimes, failure is part of the process. In our case, while our first pass at the project was a painful experience, it was ultimately a useful one.

Successful Transformations Start with Listening

Regardless of the planning, people and resources dedicated to a project, sometimes change doesn’t work. While staying flexible and adaptable is critical to being able to tweak your strategy if needed, it’s equally important to listen to the data – and your teams – to determine if it’s a small change in direction that’s required, or a major one. As leaders, we need to motivate and direct, but we also need to create a culture that thrives among challenging conversations. The most important factor in driving successful transformation is going into that change initiative having planned for every scenario and explored every point of failure. That starts with an open channel of feedback.

This is the third and final article in a three-part series focusing on the role of “changemakers” in driving meaningful transformations that shape both the organizations they support, and their own lives and careers.

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