The Importance of Embracing Change: Lessons in Leadership from Failed Change Initiatives

A leader at a big multinational company approached me several months ago. He told me that they need my support in a huge change initiative that they are running.

The goals of this change initiative were 2 things:

1- To improve cross-functional collaboration between the Business unit’s different teams and departments, as they didn’t collaborate effectively.

And when I asked this leader to explain more and to give me an example of what he meant, he said that the team members were pushing back tasks and not willing to take ownership and if something wrong happened, they started pointing fingers at each other instead of trying to work as a team to fix the problem.

2- To change the internal culture, to improve the brand of the company and to make it more attractive to external talents.

And here, he told me that they are mainly a business-to-business company, and this makes it hard for them to attract top young talents.

And they thought that by transforming the internal culture and having happy collaborative employees supported by the right processes and systems and the right vision, they could attract more and more young skilled talents.

The leader then shared with me some documents and told me that they have already a project internally across the business unit that has been running for more than 1 and a half years but very minor progress was made, and this is why they needed my help.

So, I asked him ‘’who is sponsoring this project, and who is running the project?’’

He told me ‘’The site leader who is also the Sr. director is the sponsor of the change initiative project, and he really believes in it. And regarding who is running and executing the project, we created a cross-functional team of young enthusiastic people, led by a project manager. The team contains 10 people from different functional areas and all of them are people in operational, non-leadership positions.’’

I asked him ‘’you said that the team is full of people who are in non-leadership roles. What about key leaders and specifically the movers and shakers inside the company?’’

He answered ‘’the team came up with their own plan and the team members try to make progress and then they meet once or twice per month with the site leader as well as the key leaders to share with them the updates.’’

I asked him ‘’and what was the outcome?’’

He told me ‘’a lot of people from the project team as well as the leaders felt that this was a waste of time. The change initiative team felt that they were not getting enough support from the leaders and that they did not really believe in this project even though it is sponsored by the site leader. It was even very hard for the team members to ‘’catch’’ any of these leaders when they needed help or when they needed to schedule a meeting.’’

He then stopped for a moment and then added ‘’on top of that Mohamed, the little information that we were able to gather in the past 1.5 years made us even more confused. Because when it comes to the problems of cross-functional collaboration, for example, we do not know if the problem is in the leadership team, or the problem is in the team members and the people in operational roles. This is why we want your help. We believe not only that you can get us back on track and bring clarity regarding what we need to focus on, but we also believe that our leaders will be open to listening to you and will show openness far more than what is happening now with the internal team members and employees.’’

Now I want to stop this true story here and to build on what I shared with you until now.

Change is a must. In fact, the true value and essence of leadership is to draw visions and to drive consistent change.

But based on my experience, this rarely happens. Or if it happens, it happens not in the best way inside companies. And this is for a lot of reasons. So, in relation to the story that I shared with you above, I want to share with you some of the mistakes that leaders make that destroy change initiatives inside companies before they even start.

1-Waiting for the right time to start.

I hear this sentence a lot from leaders inside companies whenever the word ‘’change’’ is mentioned, no matter if this change is a minor change or a major change.

Usually, they say something like this ‘’I want to start focusing on XY, but unfortunately, I am very busy nowadays. I will wait until I have more time.’’

courtesy of powertofly.com

And I know, as well as you know and they know, that the perfect moment will never come. We all know that we have to do what we should do regardless of the ‘’perfect’’ moment.

Change initiatives are supposed to happen consistently inside any corporation. There is nothing called one change initiative, there is nothing called a change initiative because we are having problems. And there is nothing called ‘’When are these change initiatives going to end?’’

Leadership equals consistent change.

2-Not knowing where to start.

Let me ask you, what do the words ‘’Change initiatives’’ really mean?

If you want to change anything inside any company, you need to change human behavior. You need people to do X instead of Y so that you achieve something new.

But when it comes to changing human behavior, most people do not know what to do and where to start.

And If you are a person who is in a leadership position and reading this right now, ask yourself (and be honest) ‘’do I really know how to change people’s behaviors?’’

If changing human behavior is easy and common sense, then anyone can lose weight, stop smoking, stop drinking, stop being impulsive, or stop dealing aggressively with other people...etc. But we all know that changing behavior is hard. Very hard.

So either you invest a considerable amount of time learning, applying, making mistakes, correcting yourself, and trying to reach the right formula or ask for the ‘’right type’’ of external help from outside the company.

The idea of ‘’let’s just do it’’  without spending effort, time, and money to learn how to change human behavior, or the idea of just attending training, a seminar, or an online course for 2-5 days and thinking that this is enough and that you are ready (like unfortunately how we do it when we appoint people to new managerial roles) will rarely work.

And if you doubt what I say let me tell you this.

If changing behavior is easy and can happen via attending a training or a seminar, then anyone who wants to be good at public speaking will attend public speaking training and will transform his or her speaking skills, or anyone who wants to lose weight will attend a weight loss seminar and then they will get back in shape.

And of course, I know as well as you know that this does not happen most of the time.

Think about it. Companies invest tons of money in training programs. We have training programs in areas such as public speaking, presentation skills, strategic thinking, leadership, creative thinking, and more. And I am sure you attended some of them.

So, let me ask you, did you change your behavior after attending them? And if yes for how long?

Did your colleagues become super creative thinkers after attending the creative thinking training?

Did you become more strategic after attending the strategic thinking training?

The retention to execution rates after attending these trainings are very very low and almost none.

Because training programs and seminars are only intended to give you insights and not to change your behavior. And we all know that there is a difference between knowing something and doing it.

And even if you decide to change your behavior in one specific area, you will face a lot of inertia from the environment around you which will make it easier for you to revert to your old behaviors.

So again, do not think that you will just wing it like the Americans like to say, or do not think that you will attend a course and then you will be great at changing human behavior.

Personal story: When I was a global project manager lots of years ago, I attended the PMI Risk Management course. And If you work in project management, you know that the project management institute (or PMI) is one of the most respected institutes to train and certify project managers worldwide.

I attended the course and after finishing it, I was pumped to apply some of the risk management strategies that I have learned. But as soon as I did, I was attacked immediately by a lot of people inside the company.

For example, one of the things that we learned in the risk management course was that project managers should prepare a risk mitigation plan and share it with the customers along with the main project plan.

This risk mitigation plan contains information about possible bottlenecks that can cause delays and how we can reduce their impacts.

As soon as some people in the company where I am working became aware that I would create such a plan and show it to our client, they objected immediately and said ‘’We cannot show something like this to our client. We will make our client concerned and we may lose the project.’’

We went back and forth until after lots of problems and internal conflicts, I had to accept.

This is just one example of the power of inertia inside companies. So never underestimate it.

3-Focusing mainly on data and logical facts to drive people to change.

If I told you that smoking can lead to cancer and showed you statistics, would you stop smoking?

Or If I showed you statistics that sugar is not good for your health and skin in lots of ways, would you stop eating sugary products?

I do not know why humans forget these things as soon as they become in the corporate world.

As a leader, you are dealing with humans. And humans are not moved mainly through facts and data. Humans are mainly moved via emotions. Logic and facts come at the end only to reaffirm our choices and decisions.

So now the question is why are you trying to use ONLY facts and logic all the time and everywhere?

Why, for example, are you trying always to create presentations that are full of facts and believing that ONLY this will help other people adopt your point of view and accept your recommendation, idea, or change initiative?

I can hear you. You may be thinking that what I am saying is good, but you are wondering how you can use emotions to drive change.

Glad that you asked. Let me share with you a story. This story was shared by John Kotter, one of the experts in leading change inside organizations.

Jon Stegner believed that the large manufacturer that he was working for was wasting a lot of money. He believed they had the opportunity to drive down purchasing costs by 1 billion dollars over the next five years.

To succeed in saving this number, a big process shift would be required, and for that shift to occur, Stegner knew that he’d have to convince his bosses.

He also knew that the management would not support such a big shift unless they believed in the opportunity, and for the most part, they didn’t.

So, what did he do to prepare a convincing case?

He assigned an intern to investigate a single item. This item was the work gloves, which workers in most of the company’s factories wore.

The student worked on identifying all the types of gloves used in all the company’s factories and then traced back what the company was paying for them.

The results were staggering. The intern discovered that the factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves.

On top of that, they were using different glove suppliers, and they were all negotiating their own prices.

The same pair of gloves that cost $5 at one factory might cost $17 at another.

Stegner asked the student to collect a sample of every one of the 424 different types of gloves and to tag each one of them with the price paid.

Then all the gloves were gathered and piled up on the conference table. Stegner then invited all the division presidents to come to the meeting room and to see with their own eyes all the types of gloves that they were buying.

Stegner recalled the scene and said ‘’What the division presidents saw was a large expensive table, normally clean or with a few papers, now stacked high with gloves. Each of our executives stared at this display for a minute. Then each said something like, “We really buy all these different kinds of gloves?”. Then they walked around the table …. They could see the prices. They looked at two gloves that seemed exactly alike, yet one was marked $3.22 and the other $10.55.

The reaction of the management was automatic: This is crazy. And we’ve got to make sure this stops happening.

And because of this incident, Stegner was capable of attracting the top management’s attention and securing their support to initiate the needed changes. The company then went and changed its purchasing process and saved a lot of money.

This is just one example that can give you some ideas about how to use emotions along with facts and numbers to make your case and influence the people around you.

4-Underestimating the power of the ‘’current state’’ and the negative power of social influence.

When you are starting a new change initiative, not all the people will be ‘’on board’’ immediately. Some people will take this change initiative seriously from day 1, while others will remain skeptical.

When people who are serious about change start changing how they behave, they will look different.

And in some cases, they will even look as if they are the only ones who are acting in a specific NEW way compared to others. This can increase the social pressure on them and can make them feel isolated.

This social pressure will even be higher if some of the people who are still doing things in the same old way are from prominent management figures.

This can lead a lot of people who start changing their behaviors to revert to their older behaviors because they are afraid of being judged or feeling isolated, and because they are worried that other people may perceive them as if they are acting or not authentic because they never behaved this way before.

Never underestimate the power of the existing behaviors and how difficult it is emotionally to change. Plan accordingly and think about how you are going to support your people emotionally, and how you will handle these situations when they happen because they will happen.

Leaving the things to be solved alone, or to circumstances, or letting your change ‘’champions’’ face the social pressure alone will undermine any change initiative before it starts.

5-Underestimating the impact of the ‘’positive illusion’’ bias especially on leaders.

As I mentioned in one of my previous articles, Positive illusions are unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have toward themselves or toward people who are close to them.

And in 1988, two psychologists, Taylor and Brown, identified 3 positive illusions:

1- Unrealistic and excessively high assessments of one’s own abilities, or what is called ‘’the above-average effect’’.

2- Unrealistic optimism about the future.

3- Illusion of control. Which is an exaggerated assessment of the individual's personal control over environmental circumstances.

Positive illusion and specifically the above-average effect, lead to several problems in the workplace:

1- Positive illusion makes it hard to evaluate ourselves and to know exactly how we are doing. Accordingly, change (on a personal scale) and change initiatives (on a corporate scale) become very hard to consider and execute.

2- People become reluctant to improve or to ask for support. Because simply, why should they improve if they believe that they are above average? And why should they ask for support, if they do not detect that there is a problem?

And these 2 can stop any change initiative before it starts. So you have to think in advance about how you are going to reduce the ‘’positive illusion’’ impact, especially on leaders (you can read this article that I wrote a few weeks ago here. It will give you some ideas and solutions).

6- Lack of urgency

Do you remember the story that I mentioned at the beginning?

When the leader told me ‘’a lot of people from the team as well as the leaders felt that this was a waste of time. The change initiative team felt that they were not getting enough support from the leaders and that they did not really believe in this project even though it is sponsored by the site leader. It was even very hard for the team members to ‘’catch’’ any of these leaders when they needed help or when they needed to schedule a meeting.’’

This story is happening at a lot of companies around the world. And one of the main reasons for this is the lack of urgency.

For example, at any company (and especially big ones), some employees can believe that change is a must and that they have to do something and do it now, while other employees (usually the majority) are always thinking that this is an exaggeration and that no urgent change is needed. And usually, the bigger the company the more lack of urgency you will find because people overestimate their power, capabilities, and resources.

Let us take the automotive industry in Germany as an example.

While a lot of companies know that China is making huge progress in the electric vehicles market and winning more and more ground, you can still see a lot of employees in the automotive sector here in Germany relaxed and debating that no urgency is needed, because they believe that the German automotive industry will sooner or later lead.

While this belief is great and can be helpful, it can also lead to relaxation and complacency.

Exactly like a sports athlete who decides not to train super hard and give 100% in preparation for the world championship, because he won the world championship a lot of times before.

You are not supposed to start a change initiative, especially if it is on a bigger scale, without making sure that there is enough urgency to support the change initiative and that there are enough people on board who believe that change is a must.

But this is not everything. Lack of urgency doesn’t only cause all of these problems, but it also leads to the next mistake which is…

7-Lack of the ‘’right’’ management support.

Again, coming back to the story that I mentioned at the beginning. Do you remember when the leader told me that the site leader was the sponsor of the change initiative project? And that a cross-functional team of young enthusiastic people from different functional areas led by a project manager, are running the project and that they are all in non-leadership roles?

This was a big mistake. And this happens at a lot of companies.

The team running the change initiative, especially if it is a big change initiative, should contain key leaders. And the more movers and shakers that it contains, the more powerful the force behind this change will be.

Of course, the team may include young enthusiastic employees who are in non-leadership roles, but having key leaders, and movers and shakers on the team is a must.

I want to repeat this again to make it clear. The key leaders should be the core of the team, not people that the team meets up with frequently to share with them updates and that’s all.

Unfortunately, what happens in a lot of companies is similar to the story that I mentioned.

Change initiatives are either assigned to people who are at the bottom of the hierarchy or assigned to the Human resources department because a lot of KEY leaders avoid such initiatives and consider them a waste of time in comparison to other tasks on their to-do lists. The problem is that the human resources department alone is never enough to drive a huge change without key leaders.

Again, without people who possess power, are in key leadership roles, and feel a sense of urgency, nothing will move.

These are 7 mistakes, but of course, they are not all the mistakes. But at least these are the mistakes that happen frequently, and I see them repeated over and over at a lot of companies.

So, if you are a leader who wants to initiate change in your team, department, or company as a whole, be aware of these mistakes. And if you need more advice, then reach out to me.

Let us create a workplace that is attractive, healthy, and optimum for the new generations. Let us once leave something in this world better than we found it. Let us build something now, that our kids and the new generations will thank us for later. And let us do it together…This is my vision.