The Difficulties of Change Management

Changing corporate culture is an extremely difficult prospect. While many have anecdotal evidence that affirms this, the data back up the sentiment. According to a recent study, 91 percent of organizations say they have attempted change initiatives in the past, only to see them fail. Only 3 percent of respondents to this particular study said they implemented a change initiative that met 100 percent of its goals. Lior Arussy, president of Strativity Group, says a reason many of these projects fail is that there is a general lack of discipline during change management processes. “People think [customer experience] is common sense. They think we don’t need to tell them how to do it, that they’ll just do it. It’s not that people don’t want to do the right thing. It’s because of multiple things that they don’t do it,” he said. The main reason these initiatives fail is a lack of communication. According to the study, 62 percent of respondents said poor communication was the biggest barrier to successful, long-term change, and 50 percent said lack of understanding as to why the change was necessary at all caused their project to fail. Arussy says change management must always be connected to a well-communicated purpose. “A lot of these strategies die at the cooler when the supervisor says, don’t worry, it’s not going to happen. The C-level will say one thing but frontline managers often aren’t aligned to that,” he adds.