Why Do Most Business Culture Change Efforts Fail?

why most business culture change efforts fail

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hey it looks like we’re live now and 00:02 this is something we’re to be doing more 00:04 often here at the ultimate why to try to 00:06 connect you with topics of culture 00:08 change employee engagement and 00:10 leadership development so today’s topic 00:12 is why do leadership or management 00:16 change initiatives fail now McKinsey and 00:22 Associates a large research group 00:24 in the management area has done a lot of 00:27 research in fact recently in 2018 they 00:29 did a survey of 3199 executives about 00:34 their management change initiatives how 00:37 well they did and guess what 70% of them 00:39 failed 00:40 so that’s a fairly high failure rate and 00:43 you can see that kind of failure rate is 00:46 something that discourages a lot of 00:48 these initiatives and a lot of delving 00:50 into leadership development so they 00:54 wanted to investigate what were the 00:55 factors involved in making this 00:57 successful rather than a failure so they 01:00 came up with four things so ready to 01:03 write these four things down first is a 01:05 compelling change story 01:07 the second is role modeling the third is 01:10 reinforcement mechanisms and the force 01:13 is capability building so those are the 01:17 four factors that went into the 30% 01:21 success rate according to their research 01:24 and I wanted to go back over these a 01:27 little bit more detail 01:29 according to the article and give you 01:30 some correlation with with some of the 01:33 thinking that we have here feel to the Y 01:35 so the first is compelling story of 01:38 course we’ve all heard how narrative is 01:40 very important in to the the Millennial 01:43 Generation 01:44 and quite frankly it’s something it’s 01:46 part and parcel of all of the 01:49 generations maybe the millennial 01:50 generation it’s just a little bit more 01:52 attuned to that then the rest of us are 01:54 that the awareness that we have a story 02:01 that sort of compels us as individuals 02:03 it’s our core beliefs if I believe that 02:05 things are okay I wouldn’t want to 02:09 with change so if my change story 02:11 actually sees changes of threat that’s 02:15 probably something that leads towards 02:16 the 70 percent failure rate people have 02:18 this in nurse reports I’m getting my 02:19 paycheck I’m doing well in my job if I 02:23 become the sole individual that begins 02:26 to change do things differently then 02:28 that I could be the problem I could be 02:30 the source of the ire of my community so 02:34 we need a corporate compelling change 02:37 story another thing that they said that 02:38 was kind of interesting is it doesn’t 02:40 really work for a change story to come 02:43 down from on high you know just like a 02:45 we’re gonna change because of this if 02:49 management imposes the change story it 02:52 doesn’t become accepted they said they 02:53 had a story where it they showed that if 02:56 people wrote down their own lottery 02:57 number versus were given a lottery 02:59 ticket there were five times more likely 03:01 to hang on to that lottery ticket which 03:04 was an interesting little story saying 03:06 that you know to prove the point that if 03:08 you create something yourself then it 03:09 becomes precious to you you hold on to 03:11 it so that’s why they were doing this 03:15 change story and the change story needs 03:18 to come from the bottom up from each 03:20 individual not just from top down and 03:22 it’s tap into ultimate wise ultimate 03:27 meanings in their lives 03:28 so those are a couple of things that we 03:30 do it at the ultimate why we do have a 03:32 program that that develops change story 03:35 from each individual each team from the 03:37 bottom up and then we also connect that 03:41 change story to very deep level ultimate 03:43 wise and each individual’s life 03:46 connected to their traits and to their 03:48 values and to how they do life so those 03:51 are very important things in the change 03:53 story the compelling story of change the 03:56 next is role modeling which is also very 03:58 important leadership on all levels needs 04:02 to be engaging in in the change effort 04:06 so yeah a lot of times you get a very 04:08 high degree of buy-in from top 04:10 management but then low-level management 04:13 it’s kind of ho-hum about buy-in and 04:15 becoming a role model other studies that 04:18 weren’t mentioned in this article that 04:20 are interest 04:21 is that if someone sees two or three 04:25 other people doing an action once 04:27 they’re far more likely to actually 04:30 repeat that action then if they see a 04:33 leader doing it three times so it needs 04:36 to be a role model that is also within 04:38 the leadership but also within the 04:40 culture pervasively so that’s those are 04:43 two things that the ultimate why model 04:46 actually we wanted to inculcate into our 04:49 model is to have that multi level buy-in 04:52 and processing and we also wanted it to 04:56 be sort of very wide and broad in the 04:59 role modeling aspect of things so that’s 05:01 one of the things that we’re doing in 05:03 the third which is like unto that is 05:04 reinforcement mechanisms so a lot of the 05:08 curricula that we evaluated before you 05:10 know buying into our curriculum or 05:12 creating our curriculum rather was that 05:15 it be sort of like a one-time event 05:16 where we tell you here are the 16 things 05:18 you need to do I just get them done and 05:21 Bob I have fun we found that to be 05:25 troubling because I’ve been involved in 05:27 change efforts and unless they are sort 05:30 of consistent and ongoing and reinforced 05:33 it’s just gonna be a binder and a shelf 05:35 that that gets forgotten shortly and 05:38 then the fourth is capability building 05:40 you need to have some sense of growth in 05:43 the areas that are necessary for someone 05:48 to to expand their life into the 05:51 challenges that are being created by 05:53 this new change story so if you don’t 05:55 give them a compelling way to get into 05:58 that or some tools and resources to do 06:02 that then ultimately your change efforts 06:05 will fail or become or will struggle and 06:09 again the ultimate why has a section in 06:11 our matrix called the promise where 06:13 people are develop developing their own 06:15 mission and their own goals and their 06:18 own actions for like a nine week period 06:21 where they’re trying to grow into 06:23 something new and so we give a lot of 06:25 tools into growth because part of 06:28 connecting and how positive connection 06:31 is is being able to grow into things 06:32 people want 06:34 they’re giving and their relationships 06:37 to expand into positive areas so those 06:40 are four compelling areas and I’ll 06:41 repeat them again though the compelling 06:42 change story role modeling reinforcing 06:46 mechanisms and capability building those 06:48 are the four things that lead towards 06:50 the 30% success rate according to 06:53 Mackenzie so we were really excited by 06:57 this article because if the research 07:00 really reinforced the approach that 07:02 we’re taking here at the ultimate why so 07:03 we’d love to continue this conversation 07:05 with you we’re going to be doing more of 07:08 this kind of conversation next week on 07:11 our YouTube channel and we’ll probably 07:13 try to post that on our site as well as 07:15 as sort of a webinar that you can join 07:18 in on we’ll be emailing this out and 07:21 communicating with you each week 07:23 hopefully a little bit more about how to 07:26 connect and how to continue the 07:28 conversation and of course if you want 07:30 to continue the conversation personally 07:31 with us you can reach out to us and we’d 07:33 love to talk more with you about your 07:35 change efforts your culture development 07:37 your employee engagement challenges your 07:40 leadership development challenges and 07:43 this is our mission here is to make 07:46 every place a great place to work at so 07:49 please stay in touch and thanks for 07:51 tuning in