Why Change Management Really Fails: 4 Shocking Causes And How To Fix Them

Written by Mark Murphy.
This article was originally published in Forbes.

Change management is notoriously difficult. It’s so hard, in fact, that the landmark Leadership IQ study, Why CEOs Get Fired, discovered that mismanaging a change effort was the top reason why chief executives were pushed out.

Leadership IQ interviewed 1,087 board members from organizations that fired, or otherwise forced out, their chief executive. Virtually every organization we interviewed indicated they were undergoing, or had recently undergone, an organizational change. However, half of board members said that their change process did not go well. Most pointed to a failure to adequately sell the need to change course or the lack of an effective change management model.

Managing change isn’t just about crafting and communicating a compelling vision. Nor is successful change management about delegating the soft stuff to human resources. It’s about more than having a well-articulated change model. When organizational change fails, it’s typically less about the change process and more about whether senior executives and change leaders truly understand the psychology of their people and their organizational culture.

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What follows are four shocking reasons why change management really fails and data-driven tips for fixing those issues.

1: Employees Don’t Understand The Rationale Behind The Change Management Effort

One of the most basic questions that any organizational change effort needs to answer is, “What’s the rationale behind why we need to change?”

It’s theoretically an easy question to answer; we just explain ‘why’ this organizational change is happening and ‘why’ employees need to participate in the change effort. But shockingly, most employees do not fully understand the rationale behind leaders’ and companies’ change management efforts.

In Leadership IQ’s study, Resistance To Change In Organizations, we surveyed more than 30,000 employees and discovered that a measly 15% always understand the rationale behind their organization’s strategy (e.g., economic, marketplace, competitive factors, etc.).

From the chart above, you can see that there are more people who never or rarely understand the rationale behind their organization’s strategy than there are those who always or frequently do.

If people don’t understand the rationale behind organizational change management, they simply won’t change. If a company seems to be doing well, why would it need change management? To most rational minds, that would seem pretty irrational.

But here’s the kicker: Most leaders don’t create a new change effort on a whim. Most leaders have spent weeks or months thinking about the need for organizational change management.

Perhaps leaders have been assessing market shifts, or they’ve been closely analyzing the evolution of new technologies, or they’ve attended industry conferences and taken note of big changes. Regardless of the specifics, most leaders have been considering the rationale for a change management effort for months.

But when those leaders return to the organization and declare their new change management effort, they usually forget to share the intellectual journey they took that brought about this epiphany and need for organizational change management.

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Leaders may draft a quick memo or give a brief presentation that summarizes their ideas, but rarely do those memos and presentations capture the months of thinking, analysis, and competitive research that have taken place. Thus the typical employee has no real understanding of the rationale behind the current change management initiative. And frankly, the average change management process places too much emphasis on communicating a vision for the change initiative and not nearly enough energy stressing the need to explain the rationale behind the change management process.

If you want organizational change to succeed, it’s essential that you spend lots of time clearly articulating the rationale behind your change initiative, including all those nitty-gritty steps along your intellectual journey.

2. Executives Like Leaving Their Comfort Zone (But Others Don’t)

What makes CEOs different from everyone else? Common guesses include luck, ambition, brains, and a lack of work-life balance. But in reality, one of the most demonstrable differences is a combination of risk tolerance and change readiness. In other words, the average CEO is a very eager change manager.

On Leadership IQ’s test, How Do You Personally Feel About Change?, one of the questions asks respondents to select from these options:

• I undertake career/business changes that others describe as difficult or audacious.
• I undertake career/business changes that are achievable and realistic.
• I don’t undertake very many career/business changes.

If you’ve studied human nature, you won’t be shocked that fewer than a third of respondents undertake changes that are difficult or audacious. Most people either avoid change or undertake more achievable changes.

But, when the Leadership IQ team analyzed the data by position, the data got interesting. For instance, 45% of top executives undertake changes that others describe as difficult or audacious. But for frontline employees, that number is only 27%. In other words, CEOs are 66% more likely to want an audacious change management strategy than their frontline employees.

The chart below shows the data for various job levels:

You can see from the chart that there is a very strong linear relationship between how high a person ranks in the company and how much they undertake audacious change. Frontline employees and managers are more likely to prefer the status quo, and if they do embrace change, they’ll be more cautious.

We know from that online test that executives are often Venturers when it comes to leading change. Unlike a majority of employees on the frontlines, who are more likely to approach change cautiously, Venturers are motivated by bold changes, audacious goals and uncertainty.

Venturers thrive when their environment is constantly changing. They generally prefer big challenges and love the chance to be the first to try something new. And that means they’re far more excited by change management than the typical employee in their company.

This is a critical insight for any change management process. If CEOs or other senior executives are the people who initiated the change initiative or change program, they’re certainly going to be supporters of the change process. But what that CEO (or change manager) may not understand is that their mindset is radically different from the employees on the frontlines. Senior executives are far more likely to want to be change managers. By contrast, frontline employees are far more likely to enjoy the status quo.

3. Leaders Aren’t Candidly Sharing Their Challenges

A basic rule of change management is that it’s easier to change a failing company than a successful one. Why? Because, in a failing or troubled organization, staying in the status quo is untenable. The company is failing, so how could we possibly stay where we are and not change? Change leaders would, ironically, much rather work with troubled organizations that possess a deep sense of urgency.

But in thriving companies, it’s understandable if employees question why we’re undertaking organizational change when we’re already successful. What company needs a change management plan when they’re thriving?

Of course, even the most successful companies have challenges; nobody is perfect. The problem is that far too many leaders don’t like to talk candidly about the company’s challenges.

Data from Leadership IQ’s test, What’s Your Style Of Change Management?, reveals the following:

As you can see in the chart above, only 35% of leaders are always or frequently sharing their challenges. That means that nearly two-thirds of leaders are failing to take the essential change management step of openly sharing their challenges.

Leaders with an Evolutionary style of change management are less likely to openly share challenges than are leaders with a more Revolutionary style. Their desire for incremental change decreases their desire for big discussions about company challenges.

And then, there are leaders operating under the mistaken idea that if they share the challenges facing the organization, they’ll be seen as negative or pessimistic. But that’s patently untrue. Candidly sharing challenges isn’t negative; it’s simply being honest and forthright. And that’s a quality that employees overwhelmingly admire.

An effective change effort requires a challenge; no company changes without a good reason. And if the company is pursuing transformational change, then the need for a compelling challenge is even more paramount. Any good change management model will highlight that organizational change moves much faster and easier when there’s a challenge to be overcome. But if your proposed change isn’t tied to a specific, urgent and real challenge, you can expect lots of resistance.

4. Employee Personalities Aren’t Receptive To Change

One of the least discussed predictors of whether an organizational change will be successful is the organizational culture, and specifically, the employee personalities that comprise that organizational culture.

There are five major motivators that drive people’s actions at work; Achievement, Power, Affiliation, Security and Adventure. From the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve taken the online assessment, What Motivates You?, we know that 33% of people are driven by Affiliation and 20% are driven by Security.

People driven by Affiliation want harmonious relationships with other people, and they want to feel accepted by others. These individuals prefer work that provides significant personal interaction. They enjoy being part of groups and make excellent team members. The problem comes when an organization undertakes abrupt change that starts to make people uncomfortable, breaks apart those affiliative bonds, key team members start leaving, and it feels as though a previously tight-knit group starts breaking apart. Now, if those affiliative people were part of a change advisory board, for example, perhaps the organization would stand a better chance of turning them from resistors to key stakeholders. But, sadly, that rarely happens.

People driven by Security look for continuity, consistency, and predictability in their job, work, and pay. They are driven by guarantees and may prefer to stay with the same company, or in the same position or department, for the long haul. High-security people often get anxious over change. And transformational change, or highly destructive/disruptive change, just isn’t their thing.

Now, not every company is heavily staffed with employees driven by Security and Affiliation; sometimes, organizations are filled with adventure-driven change agents. But for those companies that pride themselves on social cultures, and that value consistency and predictability, transformational change is likely to feel especially disruptive. This can be particularly problematic if the company’s key stakeholders are driven by Security and Affiliation.

How do you know if your culture employs a preponderance of Affiliation and Security-driven people? Look at what seems to motivate your employees. If they prize teamwork, social contact with colleagues, and lots of face-to-face time, there’s a good chance they have a high Affiliation drive. And if they generally look before they leap, get anxious amidst ambiguity, and prefer clearly defined jobs and projects, they likely have a high Security drive.