In business, especially in these tough times, resisting change is like holding your breath – if you succeed, you’ll die!
The pace of change for businesses to survive and thrive today is relentless – and organisations need to evolve and positively change in order to grow profitable sales, increase market share, stay ahead of the competition and amaze customers with levels of service that will lock them into you forever and a day.
How this change is managed by the leadership team is the key to success; it’s also the main reason that 70% of change initiatives fail to take root properly and produce anything like the expected outcomes. When an organisation’s appetite and ability to change are not aligned with its business objectives, the following symptoms appear.
- The performance and results are behind plan (but short-term initiatives make it look like you’re getting closer to hitting the numbers)
- Employees are unclear about the purpose / vision, direction and strategies (although the leaders don’t know that because they never / rarely check)
- Senior Managers feel under extra pressure (because decision making is delegated upwards all the time!)
- Employees assume managers know more about future plans/changes than they are telling when they don’t (this shows there’s a lack of trust)
- There’s a lack of team spirit, pride, passion and “can do” / want to ” attitudes
- Everyone focuses on “their own patch” (SILOs) (because they don’t see the big picture, the end-to-end solutions and what part they play!)
- It’s harder and harder to really motivate people and get things done (“Why should I bother; no-one appreciates my efforts?”)
- A lack of accountability / ownership / empowerment is rife (although leaders think they have empowered individuals because they’ve told them they are!)
- Rumours of re-structuring and reorganisation, etc … flourish (because leaders don’t know how to motivate people properly to lead and land change properly – so it must be the structure!)
Do you recognise any of these symptoms in your organisation? If you do, then you need to take some positive action now!
Through one of our recent business-critical change programmes, we helped one organisation to enable an increase in sales of 126% compared to the equivalent a year earlier. The in-branch sales teams bubbled with energy, despite a recruitment freeze, and team-working brilliance was created.
“You came along to help me land a big change initiative…and we did that didn’t we! And you helped deliver a 126% increase in revenues; what’s more, everyone improved their lives too –thank you for all the inspiration!” CEO, Financial Services
We’re always happy to talk, so contact us on 01244 681 068 or by email to discuss your organisational transformation today.
