Recently, consulting firm Emergent partnered with a Fortune 500 apparel company to undertake the biggest business transformation in the company’s history. Below is a mini case study that provides insights from that project. Building upon its solid performance in 2012, the company chose to implement a new global structure designed to fuel its long-term, international growth. The […]
If you’ve been involved in a business transformation program you know that sustaining change on a large-scale over time can be very difficult. This is especially true for programs that require a lengthy implementation period such as ERP implementations and multi-year enterprise cost-cutting programs. The progress generated by short-term wins often propels the change effort […]
We are occasionally asked about mistakes that we see companies make related to organizational change management. In reflecting back over several years and many client engagements, below are the most common mistakes that we have seen. 1) Short-Cutting the Change Process Change is a process, not a single event. Organizational change does not happen instantaneously as […]
Many excellent change initiatives never get off the ground, stagnating just when they should be flowering. Why, after an enthusiastic start, do so many major change efforts—a new product rollout, international expansion, deployment of a new IT system—founder and organizations return to the pre-change state? It’s because companies focus disproportionately on the structure and technical […]
Previously, we addressed how to create a powerful future vision. Equally important is how that vision gets communicated to your people. This is where the art and skill of storytelling becomes very important. Done well, storytelling can be a powerful catalyst for driving transformational change. Effective leaders tell stories that position them and their organizations […]
The latest issue of McKinsey Quarterly contains a case study titled Developing Better Change Leaders. Using the backdrop of a multi-national operations improvement initiative, it addresses leadership development and organizational change and underscores the factors that make it possible to drive and sustain profound transformation. The case study highlights a number of important change leadership practices. Below, […]
Also, check out Blueprint for Building an Internal Change Capability Two-thirds of all large-scale change initiatives fail to achieve their expected business benefits. This failure rate represents billions of dollars in lost productivity, wasted resources, opportunity costs and rework—not to mention the cost of lost jobs and workforce disengagement. Companies that learn to manage change effectively […]
In previous blog posts we addressed the importance of creating a sense of urgency for your organizational change initiative (e.g., Use Heart and Mind Appeal to Create a Sense of Urgency). Establishing a proper sense of urgency for change is often a skipped step or it is assumed that the sense of urgency is already […]
Jesse Jacoby
