6 reasons why your change initiative is failing
If people in your organization aren’t changing like you wish they would, blaming it on “resistance to change” is a lazy and unhelpful diagnosis. But the question remains: Why are you failing to change their behaviors?
Here are the usual suspects:
The change is not relevant to them.
You tried too hard and overengineered a solution that doesn’t solve their problem any better than what they do today.
The change doesn't fit their identity.
How they do things today fits their image of who they are and what they are good at. Fitting those images together took a long time, and now you're asking them to start all over again. The gap between what they believe in and what you’re asking for is too broad, or a straight-up clash!
The change doesn't work.
You didn’t see the whole picture when you designed the change. Real-life barriers in people's contexts make it difficult for them to do what you ask. Either it’s near impossible, or it will have negative consequences for them.
You overestimated conformity.
You thought, "If everyone just works the same way", but forgot that their contexts differ a lot. What’s an improvement for some makes things worse for others, and your one-size-fits-all solution is probably a compromise for most.
You're asking too much in too little time.
Change takes time, and there's limited bandwidth to change. On top of that, someone else is probably asking them for a different change simultaneously, creating confusion or even conflicting directions.
The change you're asking for is too implicit.
You want to change behaviors, but what you're changing is either hard things like processes, work instructions, roles and systems, or soft things like purpose, values and principles. From this, you’re hoping that new behaviors will emerge magically. But you haven't told them what behaviors are you actually hoping for!
Read this article to find out what you should be doing instead.
Vadim Feldman
Founder and Management Consultant
