Lessons from IBM’s Global Business Services team on how to ensure the success of your change projects.

If you want the most up-to-date research on how to manage change successfully, you need to take a look at IBM’s Closing the Change Gap report (2009), which is based on the results of surveys and interviews with more than 1500 change practitioners from 15 nations across the globe between 2006 and 2008.

Not surprisingly, project success isn’t evenly spread across these companies: the pareto rule applies, where 20% of the change practitioners (the so-called Change Masters) are responsible for 80% of the successful projects. In contrast, the bottom 20% (the Change Novices) report a success rate of merely 8%.

So what is the key to the Change Masters’ success? IBM’s summarises the key facets in a Change Diamond as follows:

• Real insights, real actions

• Solid methods, solid benefits

• Better skills, better change

• Right investment, right impact

Now you’ll be forgiven for thinking that this is all a little obvious. It’s perhaps where the IBM model falls down. In their haste to create something which looks well-balanced and compact, persuasive and acceptable to business, I think that the IBM team has glossed over the real gems of the research, which means that you have to dig a little deeper into the report to find them.

What are the real gems?

Although it’s been recognised for years in management theory that project success is due to people and not to technology, it seems that the vast majority of the organisations which took part in IBM’s research have been a bit slow on the uptake. Either that or they’re companies which believed that technology really is superior. So the main strength of the Closing the Change Gap report is the acknowledgement that “…the ‘soft stuff’ is the hardest to get right”. In fact the top 6 of the top 10 factors which make the difference to the success of a change project are soft:

1. Senior management sponsorship 92%
2. Employee involvement 72%
3. Honest & timely communication 70%
4. Culture which motivates and promotes change 65%
5. Pioneers of change 55%
6. Change supported by culture 48%
7. Efficient training programmes 38%
8. Adjustment of performance measures 36%
9. Efficient organisation structure 33%
10. Monetary & non-monetary incentives 19%.

The role of Positive Psychology

And where does positive psychology come into all this? For me the big ticket items are the two Rs: resistance and resilience. IBM mentions the first but oddly enough, not the second. So even though ‘for its very survival, the Enterprise of the Future must better prepare itself as the pace, variety and pervasiveness of change continue to increase’, nothing is really said about how organisations should be preparing their staff from a psychological perspective to cope with this. It’s assumed that understanding and implementing a robust change management process which covers all four facets of the Change Diamond will suffice. Hmmmm, I’m not so sure!

Fortunately there is a great deal organisations can do to increase the resilience of their staff, including developing optimism, taking control of emotions, understanding the impact of beliefs on behaviour, and how to manage unhelpful thinking patterns, as well as actively managing stress levels. All of these things can help employees get back in the driving seat with renewed energy, engagement, sense of purpose and focus. Which is exactly what organisations need to meet the challenge of continual, complex change head on. And be successful.

Thanks to Paul Barrett for the link

Are Positive Organisations some kind of Utopian drivel?

I can understand why many business leaders dismiss the goal of building a positive organisation as a bit pie in the sky. After all, the success of a commercial organisation is measured by a) how much money it makes and b) how much market share it has. Enterprise is all about competition; organisations which focus on being mutually supportive have no place in this environment…

Not-for-profits and public sector organisations, on the other hand, have different goals and operate in different arenas, ones where the concept of positive organisations can be more easily accommodated.

No wonder building a positive organisation is often considered inconsistent with the goals of commercial enterprises.

Well I think business leaders might be waking up to the fact that it’s not so pink and fluffy after all.

Tom Peters, one of the world’s foremost leadership gurus, and co-author of In Search of Excellence (which Bloomsbury called the greatest business book of all time), has written his thoughts on the idea in this short paper “Why Else Get Out of Bed in the Morning?” My suggestion is that you bear with the form (especially P1) and focus on the content. In typical Peters style, it probably raises more questions than it answers, but hey, we’re big enough and ugly enough to work those out for ourselves aren’t we?

Many organisations are now talking about managing people according to their strengths, rather than the traditional approach where weaknesses are addressed. I find this new strengths-based approach (being used in recruitment, selection, evaluation, development, project management) very interesting on several levels.

In my experience, people seem quite keen to talk about their strengths; at least, they are keener to do this than share their weaknesses (or ‘development needs’ if you want to be PC). This also gives the whole area of organisational evaluation and development much needed energy and enthusiasm, which is a fantastic outcome. For many employees, annual appraisals were occasions to be endured; now they find that their managers actually want to talk to them about the things they excel at, which makes people feel a whole lot better about themselves, more motivated and more engaged,

The idea of playing to your strengths isn’t new of course, but the suggestion that you no longer need to be a well-rounded individual at work is. I think there are some key skills that you have to develop, regardless of your strengths, particularly around the ’soft’ interpersonal skills. At some point, therefore, you may need to look at areas where you are deficient. In order to be truly effective in the workplace, an understanding of how to identify and build on ones skills, knowledge and experience, as well as ones strengths, is required.

It seems to me that the thrust of strengths-based management reflects the position of Positive Psychology at the moment – erring very much on the side of the positive rather than focussing on the negative. I think what is required for both to be sustainable in the long term, however, is a more holistic approach.

According to Will Hutton, Chief Executive of the Work Foundation , the “knowledge economy” (not easy to define, in fact there is a 31 page paper ‘Defining the Knowledge Economy’ on the website) – illustrated by sectors such as business services, education, finance, telecoms – is fast becoming the biggest contributor to UK GDP. The growth of the knowledge economy started in the 1980s, he says, when traditional manufacturing (steel, transport, coal etc) started to decline.

One can take a systems view of these changes – that as one economy (manufacturing) shrinks, another (knowledge) grows to take its place. One might be tempted to think “well that’s OK then, there is still equilibrium”. But the more important point is that the kind of skills you needed to survive then are not the same skills you need to survive now and in the future .

As Hutton points out, what distinguishes the survivors from the casualties of the declining manufacturing sector (or indeed any declining sector) are soft skills. Now, in this particular programme (‘ What Makes Britain Rich?’ ) he didn’t elaborate, but we can guess the kind of things he was referring to – maybe resilience, emotional maturity, empathy, creativity, leadership, negotiation, team working, willingness to learn, self-awareness…there are many more.

This leads me to question whether the changes in the UK education system are really keeping pace with these changes in the world of employment. We do seem to be somewhat more focussed on league tables and targets than on developing our children’s soft skills, and preparing them to become adults, workers, parents, inspirational leaders and responsible citizens. Hutton states that the new knowledge economy in the UK is here to stay – we can’t turn the clock back. Therefore we need to ensure that the development of soft skills appears higher on the agenda.