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In this month’s issue:
Change in a Downturn Survey
Following our newsletter of October 2008 - Leading Change in a Downturn -we carried out a snapshot survey. We surveyed over 2000 change agents on our database. As a result, we had responses from people in 28 different organisations and 25 countries. Respondents came from a wide range of functions including IT, HR, Operations and Consulting.
The survey was commissioned to help understand the change challenges in the current environment and to indicate possible change management actions they could take.
We know organisations have been faced with increasing amounts of change for a number of years now. Moreover, there have been expectations that this would continue to increase. For example, the 2008 IBM Global CEO Survey suggested that 45% of all CEOs surveyed expected that the change demand would increase and that they felt ill prepared for it. There is no doubt, from this survey, that the CEOs may have been on to something!
Key findings from the survey
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The largest group of responses did not see implementing change in the last 12 months as being any harder than before (63%). But 37% said change was harder.
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As a sign of the times 84% of organisations see change being driven by cost reduction, restructuring and efficiency.
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57% of respondents said that their projects reach at least 75% of the goals set.
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60% of respondents said there was too much change.
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Change leadership remains the main barrier to implementation success for many organisations followed by Engagement.
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51% of respondents are saying trust was lower than 12 months ago.
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64% of people are accepting or compliant of the change goals. Commitment seems to be hard to achieve with only 5% saying people are truly committed to the change agenda in their organisation.
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The results say that the most used method of implementing change is an internal team with part-time members (72%). However, internal teams with full-time members are only used 17% of the time.
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Internal teams with full-time members are seen as far more effective than an internal team with part-time members (56% vs. 30%).
Our conclusions
This survey is a snapshot in time, taken when many people are experiencing one of the fiercest recessions in the last hundred years. It is very much a picture of the here and now. Therefore, what can we conclude from the data and comments?
1. People challenged two beliefs that are widely held about change. One is that it is unsuccessful. Two that most of it is delivered by external consultants. Our respondents told us that internal teams successfully deliver over 50% of their changes.
2. People told us that building commitment is still a major issue for organisations. The data and comments would suggest that this is driven by:
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Too much change in organisations
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Low trust inside organisations
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Inadequate change leadership
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Need for better employee engagement
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Lack of full-time project resources
3. People said that the amount of change will increase over the next year from an unsustainable level of change now. It looks like organisations will need to ‘up their game’ in terms of executing change to stand a chance of emerging from this recession in a competitive position.
To obtain your copy of the Change in a Downturn survey please register here
Agents of Change
This is the fourth in the series that will feature change executives sharing their experience with you.
Carl Squires, Programme Manager Business Change, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Ltd
How are you using PCI?
We have focused on 3 areas in particular:
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Engaging local sponsors and making it clear that they are the person that we are looking to deliver our changes locally. This is proving very useful.
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Stakeholder mapping is giving us a different view of who needs to be engaged. We are then engaging with key stakeholders to build their commitment and getting them more engaged.
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The change curve is helping us understand individual reactions from people and how we manage them.
How has PCI helped you on a personal level?
On a personal level, it has helped us hugely. We can now put a structure and process to what we are doing and as a result, we are more confident and influential at senior levels. It has enabled us to see what we need to do to make project delivery more effective.
What are the 3-5 most important pieces of advice you would give other change agents for them to be successful?
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Make sure the imperative for change is clear and shared by key stakeholders – where this exists then it is much easier to get the project delivered successfully.
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Ensure that all those who are affected i.e. your adapters are identified and involved/engaged appropriately.
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Be aware of the politics around the project and ensure it is well understood by yourself and senior management. The Change Network Map is proving very useful in this respect.
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Use the change curve a commitment escalator to show where people are and what needs to be done to move onto the next step.
What are the key issues you will be working on in 2009?
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Spreading the change message through our project management team in order that each project has a change management element.
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Ensuring that we work closely with senior stakeholders to ensure they are comfortable with developing and communicating a Shared Change Purpose for each of our large change projects.
The Life of Carl Squires
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Current job - Programme Manager, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK
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Status – Married, 1 Son
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Lives - Northampton
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University – De Montfort University
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First job - Bank Clerk
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Favourite Business Book - How to Win Friends and Influence People
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Favourite Business Gadget - Yellow writing pads (differentiates our Department and I can always find them!)
ww.changefirst.com
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