A.For over three decades,academics,managers,and consultants,realizing that transforming organizations is difficult,have yzed the subject.They’ve sung the praises of leaders who communicate vision and walk the talk in order to make change efforts succeed.They’ve sanctified the importance of changing organizational culture and employees’attitudes.They’ve teased out the tensions between top-down transformation efforts and participatory approaches to change.Still,studies show that in most organizations,two out of three transformation initiatives fail.
B.Each manager looks at an initiative from his or her viewpoint and,based on personal experience,focuses on different success factors.The experts,too,offer different perspectives.A recent search for books on ‘change and management’ turned up 6,153 titles,each with a distinct take on the topic. Those ideas have a lot to offer,but take together,they force companies to tackle many priorities simultaneously,which spreads resource sand skills thin.
C.Someofthehardfactorsthataffectatransformationinitiativearethetimenecessarytocompleteit,the number of people required to execute it,and the financial results that intended actions are expected to achieve. The research shows that change projects fail to get off the ground when companies neglect the hard factors. That doesn’t mean that executives can ignore the soft elements;that would be a grave mistake. However. If companies don’t pay attention to the hard issues first,transformation programs will break down before the soft elements come into play.
D.Companies assume that the longer an initiative carries on. The more likely it is to fail—the early impetus will peter out,windows of opportunity will close,objectives will be forgotten,key supporters will leave or lose their enthusiasm,and problems will accumulate. However,contrary to popular perception, along project that is reviewed frequently is more likely to succeed than a short project that isn’t reviewed frequently. Thus,the time between reviews is more critical for success than a project’s life span.
the diversity in observing the initiative of change in companies