Shaky Foundations

Whilst over 60% of businesses will be looking to implement some form of business improvement initiative over the next 18 months, less than 1 in 4 of these change programmes will achieve any worthwhile results that are sustainable for a further 12 months post the introduction of change.

This brings into focus two key problems:

1. Some 40% of businesses are not planning to introduce any form of change, even though it is likely that there will be significant changes in their markets.

2. Only 15% of all businesses will be successful at implementing and then sustaining their change programme, whatever type of change is introduced.

This gap in success is a major issue for the long-term performance of UK PLC, but more importantly is a potential short-fuse time bomb for individual businesses.

Shifting Sands

The reason for not planning to change is a major problem with many causes, but the reason for failure of a change programme can be put down to three main causes.

- Skill Shortage

Failing to invest in obtaining suitable skills relevant to the changes being introduced and/or failing to carry out sufficient skills training.

- Management Motivation

The prevailing management style of the organisation will either hinder or support change, and sadly in most cases it hinders change. This can be seen through management inconsistency and perpetual crisis management that deflates the efforts to change.

- Organisational Environment

Organisations have personalities in the same way that individuals do. Organisational personalities are formed by the collation of individual and team personalities or cultures, flavoured by the prevailing management style of the business and influenced by the levels of openness, communication and sense of shared vision in the business.

CMF