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In a previous column, I mentioned that when I was writing Beyond the Wall of Resistance back in 1995, about 70 percent of all major changes in organizations failed. According to recent studies, the failure rate is still around 70 percent. ' These are sobering statistics.
Since the early 1990s, there has been a veritable flood of articles and books on how to lead and manage change. I just did an Amazon search on "change management" and came up with 1,582 hits. In the past 15 years, most of the large consulting firms created change management practices. Boutique firms were created specifically to address the challenges of change.
It's hard to imagine a manager in any organization who has not taken part in some change management training or received a book on leading change. That's a lot of information. You'd think we'd be pretty good at making change work by now, but we're not. So, what is going on?
There is a dilemma. I advise executives on how to lead change. I find that most know what it takes to plan and lead big projects well, but something gets in the way of turning all that knowledge into action. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton coined the term, "the knowing-doing gap"2 to describe the large gap between what leaders know and what they actually do on the job. This is a costly gap.
Unfortunately, things may be getting worse. CEOs say that there is a growing disparity between expecting change and being able to manage it.1 Groups that must work together to plan and implement major new initiatives often are located on different continents and are many time zones away from each other. It's harder to lead change today.
With each failed project, cynicism builds, making the next project an even harder sell. Every failure means missed opportunities and false starts with time and limited resources devoted to managing resistance and indifference. Many organizations cannot afford the luxury of so many failures.
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