Breakthrough Highlights: Why Do Transformational Efforts Fail?


 Lean Nation,

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday weekend and enjoyed some time with family and friends.  It is always nice to have a long weekend to re-charge your spirit and prepare to finish up strong in 2024.  I also hope 2025 is your best year ever personally and professionally.

This month's topic is a follow up from a LinkedIn posting on transformational efforts.  For your reference, the link to the posting is here. (2) Post | LinkedIn     

In this posting the writer suggests that Agile and Change Management efforts are finished within industry.  There are several thousand comments arguing for and against the hypothesis. 

I also received an article two weeks ago with the hypothesis being that 98% of the organizations that embark on continuous improvement journeys, completely abandon their efforts within 18 months.   I do not have any data to support or refute this hypothesis either, but I don't think it is a coincidence that several people are writing about this topic. 

I can confirm, from my consulting practice of nearly 20 years, that many organizations start off very strong and then reduce or eliminate their efforts over time.  This is often in light of the fact that they realized significant benefit from their initial improvement efforts.  So why is this the case?

The most common problems I see organizations make are listed below:

1) Do not waste the first six months of your improvement efforts

2) Failure to monitor the breadth and depth of change

3) Failure to get everyone involved

4) Eliminate two systems as soon as possible

Let's discuss the first common problem in more detail.  I will discuss the other 3 common problems in my next few blogs.

Do not waste the first six months of your improvement efforts - This problem stems from the fact that organizations want to jump into improvement quickly without understanding the activities needed upfront to help ensure success.  

There are some preparation requirements necessary to get ready to and sustain improvement.  You cannot jump into successful improvement on day 1.  Most organizations go from training or hiring 1-2 internal team members to launching improvement within a few months.  Is this your organization?

Here are some activities you might consider resolving before you launch your initial improvement. 

A) Select your executive change agent to lead the effort - which senior team member is there to help you address the sacred cows?

B) Learn about improvement - spend time learning about what other successful organizations have done?  This can be done though conferences, internet research, and face to face meetings. 

C) Get help from external experts - Improvement can be better deployed by using someone who has experience with organizational transformational efforts. You also benefit from someone independent to your organization that doesn't rely on prior relationships and organizational biases.

D) Establish your improvement steering committee to govern the change process - This body has a critical role in making decisions for the organization on where to improve, how fast, how to measure success, how to build capacity, how to ensure improvements stick, etc. 

E) Train your internal experts and senior leaders - Training is not just for internal continuous improvement resources, it also is necessary for leaders and middle management. This training is essential to eliminate the status quo of how to both lead and change. 

F) Develop a communication campaign for change management- Without a communication campaign, the what, the why and how of change does not reach the organization.   this step is critical in the early stages for change management purposes.  Later it is used to celebrate successes. 

G) Establish your area of focus and your measures of success in a pilot location - Improvement is best accomplished using a pilot spread approach.  Many organizations scale improvement system wide without the coaching, skills, process, measurement systems, etc. to come remotely close to being supportive and successful.  Get the improvement learning in a small, focused area and then spread the thinking and the results across the organization. Be sure to agree on what measurable success looks like before beginning.  I have seen organizations do good work but failed to show the return on that work because the measures of success varied by role. 

H) Begin improvement 


I find most organizations start at step E and then jump to step H.  These efforts most always result in lack of buy-in, and a failure to understand the why of change. Additionally, this approach completely absolves leadership from any ownership of the effort.  You will not see breakthrough improvement that is sustained without the commitment, support, and removal of barriers from the highest levels of the organization. 

Did your organization complete all these readiness tasks?  Which did you skip?  How have they impacted you? Did you abandon your efforts with the first 18 months?

If you skipped some important steps, you might consider going back and closing the gap on some of the readiness tasks.  This will help you get off on the right foot, and help you gain momentum in your improvement efforts or perhaps re-start a failed start.

Lean Blessings,

Ron

Ron Bercaw, President and Sensei

Breakthrough Horizons

www.breakthroughhorizons.com    

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-bercaw-882a0a8/  


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