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Change Management: The High Cost of Change Failures
By harveyrobbins | August 30, 2007
You win some, you lose some. Lest we imagine that a failed change initiative is a victimless crime, however, let us count the victims, and the aftereffects of a false start.
1. Loss of jobs. People lose their jobs when change fails to achieve hoped-for results. In the case of many initiatives, lost jobs is the hoped-for result. Job loss ripples through the organization, through the affected individual and his or her family, then into the community as a whole.
2. Loss of energy. Every misstep along the change journey makes the next step more difficult. The most successful change initiatives build in inevitable small successes early to forestall this power-sapping stage. To lose momentum in most cases is to lose the battle.
3. Lost of trust. If people were led to believe success was assured before, they will be less likely to believe anything later.
4. Loss of respect. See if people look up to their leaders with the same appreciation after they’ve been led off a cliff.
5. Higher stress. You thought things were bad before. Pinning your hopes on a change that fails is like swimming to a life raft and finding out it leaks.
6. Fragmentation. Whatever cohesion the team had managed to achieve may begin to come apart, as people drift back to solitary pursuits.
7. Depression. There is nothing employed people enjoy less than contemplating unemployment.
8. Anger. Where workers once reacted to initiatives by dragging their feet, now they may resort to outright sabotage.
9. Diminished risk-taking. A good change initiative lights a flame of creativity under people. If the change is snuffed, so is the light. Some workers are ruined for life - or certainly for as long as they stay with your organization.
10. Loss of credibility. People become more skeptical about the employer’s claim that they are loyal to employees and that people are their most important resource.
11. Trouble at home. Stress in people’s personal lives may have contributed to the failure of the change initiative in the first place. Now the stress loops back and makes things even worse at home.
12. A change in management’s attitude. The stakes are raised when the strike count goes to one and then two. Loyalty to workers may decrease, as management goes into save-the-company mode.
13. Games. When the ice is thin, people skate lightly. Do not look for the same directness and disclosure you saw before the change failed.
14. Less to go around. All that consulting, training, and reengineering costs big bucks. While the consultants tiptoe away, careful not to let their coins jingle, workers face the prospect of diminished resources.
15. Craziness. Flickering inside every man and woman is a lit bomb fuse. Our fuses are all different lengths, but we all go off eventually. Workplace violence claims the lives of around 1,400 Americans annually, at a cost to employers of around $42 billion. Not exactly what you hoped for from TQM.
Topics: Change Management Plan |