Organisational Change

Reports in drawers? Hundreds of millions over budget? Demoralised staff? Industrial action? The costs of badly managed and failed change are astounding. There are no easy answers: tough change is deeply challenging at personal, team, and organisational levels. Navigating change is a key organisational capability possessed in abundance, in our view, by only a few world-class organisations.

Managing change takes expertise. There are two-year post-graduate programmes that focus on it, and even though those are substantial, they focus solely on one dimension. There are technical skills, conceptual frameworks, and substantial deep interpersonal skills required. While most organisations have one or two people who are educated, experience and skilled in this way, that is generally insufficient to get any kind of major change implemented.

From our point of view, there is no ‘one best way’ in change consulting. All change methods must be acutely sensitive and applicable within the culture in which they are applied. A consortium of several leading consultancies attempted an approach developed in the private sector with a large public sector body. The result: a four-fold overrun.

Finally, there are limits to which change can be ‘done to’ an organisation either by internal or external consultants. In today’s world, the complexity, pace of change, and focus on the individual mean that autocratic styles are limited in effectiveness. Neither would we advocate a method which involves everyone in everything – too much time and money! The ‘answer’, in our view, is trust. Change leaders need to be accessible and inclusive, listen amply, and care sufficiently so that they are trusted (and empowered) to make tough calls on behalf of affected parties.