de_DE

Uwe Techt (en)

  • Blog
  • Contact

Why do so many Change Initiatives fail? (2)

Why do so many Change Initiatives fail? (2)

by Uwe Techt / Wednesday, 26 November 2014 / Published in Project- and Multiprojectmanagement

 You won’t be able to fool all of the people all of the time. 

In my experience it’s quite common to sell change initiatives to top-management by promising unrealistic benefits.

Have you ever heard a management team say, “If we implement the following technology, we’ll get the following incredible benefits,” only to find that after months or years of hard work the implementation fails to produce anything close to those benefits?

This is a perfect example of broken trust. The promise of unrealistic expectations was made and ultimately broken. Even worse, bad news travels quickly. If you break trust with one group, you have to believe that many others will hear about it. It is no wonder we so often find people who have little faith in their organization’s ability to change.

If you make a habit of setting unrealistic expectations, you will often be disappointed. But even more important, you will build a culture of mistrust.

I urge you to build and retain that trust by setting clear, realistic expectations for an initiative and to take actions to achieve those expectations. Furthermore it is important to communicate the progress of the change initiative frequently and visibly confirm that you have met or fallen below expectations.

Before beginning any initiative, think through the realistic expectations that you are going to set with different stakeholders. The expectations should be adequate to address the vision and associated urgency. Communicate them broadly, with a Communication Plan and marketing campaign, so that expectations are not at the mercy of the grapevine. Then, when the initiative is underway, communicate how it is going and why.

Remember “The easiest way to regain broken trust is never to lose it in the first place.”

Now after you have overcome the uptake problem of your change initiative through creating a sense of urgency and by communicating realistic expectations you need an adequate implementation process. In my next blog I’m going to present time-proven steps to implement Critical Chain Project Management. Part 3 will be online available from Dec. 3rd on.

Tagged under: Change Management, QuiStain

What you can read next

11 Guidelines for a system based approach to Project Management (1)
That’s Dedication for You!
We need to talk about projects…

Categories

Recent Posts

  • A Short Introduction to the Theory of Constraints

    A while back, an acquaintance asked me to summa...
  • Bullshit Jobs – What About Bullshit Projects?

    Bullshit Jobs is the title of David Graeber’s b...
  • The Agile Supply Chain

    Staying afloat in today’s market means being fa...
  • Is the OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency) Metric a good thing?

    At first glance, how can it be bad. After all, ...
  • The Quickest Way to Improved Flow 2: Fixing the right mistakes

    In the first part of this series, we explained ...

Comments

  • Antifragililty and TOC by Uwe Tech | Theory Of ... on Antifragility: be ready for anything

Archive

Tag Cloud

buffer management buffer penetration CCPM change Change Management Company Culture Constraint Corporate Culture Critical Chain Projectmanagement Critical Chain Projektmanagement Customers Decisive Competitive Edge Eli Goldratt Five Focusing Steps Flow Focus Goldratt Guestpost holistic vision Learning from Experience lessons learned Management Management Focus Mulitproject Multi-tasking Multi project Multiproject Management Multitasking production Productivity Increase Projectmanagement Project Management Projects that Flow Psychology QuiStain Rudolf Burkhard Strategies and Tactics Strategy&Tactic Strategy and Tactics system based project management sytem based project management Theory of Constraints time sheets time sheets unnecessary and damaging TOC
  • GET SOCIAL

© 2019 Uwe Techt (Imprint | Privacy Policy)

TOP