It is believed that about 70% of Operational Change Management (OCM) Programs fail to deliver the promised or expected results.
And this is 70% of programs that had clear goals and strategies established!
There may be a plethora of (sub-)causes for this to happen, but the most important ones are around organization and execution:
– No clear Accountability for the OCM program assigned to a single person.
– The Accountable person does not have the required Leadership or Management skills to execute such a program.
– Other projects and emergencies are continuously being allowed to interfere with the program.
What to do about this?
– If the OCM Lead is not the right person for the job, delegate this to someone else, or, hire an outside consultant for leading the program at a high level.
– Identify the 1-3 most important Change Projects, create small tasks with fixed due dates and make sure these are achieved: baby steps are better than no steps at all.
– Identify the Constraint that keeps you from making progress*
* Such a Constraint is often the business owner who is spending all their time working “IN” the business, having simply no time and energy left to start working “ON” the business.
In those situations, we have prioritized the hiring of a key person, like a CFO or Project Manager, to offload work from the owner. Or we accelerated the delegation of select tasks from the owner to others, often accompanied with promoting staff to supervisory / managerial positions.
Applying these remedies has not made my failure rate 0%, but it’s certainly a whole lot better than the 70% average!
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