5 strategies for designing the future

As entrepreneurs and managers, inside and outside the company, we are experiencing epochal changes that are literally changing our behaviors, the way we think and relate to others. Digital technologies that were supposed to lead us to simplification of work and reduction of physical and mental effort have not actually improved individual and corporate results and well-being.

In the face of these changes, many people persist in managing change projects in the company as in the past: from pure innovation projects to Lean transformation projects, from organizational changes to new information systems implementation projects.

We continue to use outdated organizational models and behavioral modes. For example, we let fragmented work logic and hyper-reactive behavior prevail in the company in the face of often uncontrollable sources of external variability.

I wonder how we can continue to believe that the same criteria that we would have adopted just a decade ago when, for example, smartphones did not yet exist can still be valid today!

Lean Thinking, despite its more than 70 years of longevity as a management practice, is also experiencing new glories among the promoters of change in business along with digital innovation projects, technological innovation projects, and you name it. But when it comes to these projects and the high expectations we can derive from them, there is always a dark side that escapes most people who try their hand at business transformation programs.

Improvement in business? Often a utopia

An in-depth study by the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey, which lasted more than 3 years, surveyed and interviewed more than 311,000 employees involved in business transformation projects, including 6,800 CEOs and Senior Executives, for a total of more than 400 companies analyzed. Prominent among the business transformation projects were Lean Transformation projects, along with Organizational Re-Design projects, New Product launches, and new IT systems implementations.
The conclusions of the major study were rather embarrassing: in 70 percent of the cases examined, the projects failed to achieve their initial goal and, in the best of cases, achieved good results in the short term, reverting to baseline levels in the medium to long term.

The causes of these disappointing results were also examined: in 39% of the cases, the fateful cause of resistance to change, followed a short distance away-in 33 percent of cases-by another ubiquitous cause, lack of support for change from managers.

It seems clear to me that we have a problem that is not easy to deal with, and all in all these evidences should not surprise us all that much. I think any of us who have embarked on the arduous task of making a change in our lives have experienced the difficulties that McKinsey has noted in the corporate world. Projects of different kinds that start out, have some results, but then degrade – more or less quickly – regressing to the starting situation, if not worse.

Natural resistance to change

However, what definitely does not convince me is the identification of the main root cause of this performance decay exhibited in the McKinsey study:resistance to change. Every time I hear these little magic words I get hives.

But what does it really mean? All of us have been biologically programmed to resist change. Change since the dawn of time, when we were nomadic hunter-gatherers 200,000 years ago, was synonymous with danger. Behind every change lay potential danger. New territory corresponded to possible new enemies or unknown ferocious animals or absence of food to feed us and our tribe. Any form of new experience brought with it the potential of discovering new sources of food and resources, along with possible dangers from which to defend ourselves. Man has always had to find a compromise between his innate need for security and his need for variety as he discovered new boundaries.

One thing is certain: the more I have consolidated firm boundaries, acquired certainties of any kind-right or wrong, habits that have crystallized…the more difficult it will be to change. This is normal. In life as in business.
So it is normal for people to resist change! Whatever it is.

And in my opinion, the second cause cited by the McKinsey study, the lack of support for change from managers, is not so solid either. It is not a matter of support being lacking from managers. The real problem is that very often we don’t know how to manage change, we don’t know how to find that fragile balance between the need for security and the need for variety, we don’t know how to really engage and motivate people, we don’t know how to embrace change itself firsthand and how to become an example of change. Beyond the lapidable existence of the natural resistance to change.

5 strategies to ensure greater success for business change initiatives

Those who have been following me for years are familiar with the methodology Lean Lifestyle^® fine-tuned with my team at Lenovys: an organic set of principles, methods and specific techniques for achieving more results and more well-being in the company.
And I will refer to the Lean ^Lifestyle® to point you to 5 key strategies for bringing business change projects to success. Whether small or large.

1. Explode and share the deep reasons for the project
   Often in business, we skip over all the steps that we at Lenovys call “Envisioning,” or defining the reasons behind the project. And this step really applies to any kind of project. Small or large. This step leads us to analyze, on the one hand, the consequences we will have to endure, or the risks we take if we don’t complete the project, and on the other hand, the possible goals we could achieve as a result of the new initiative.This phase, needs as much sharing as possible, because people are motivated not by what to do, but by why to do…in any field.
2. Define the expected results from the business and individual point of view
   Apparently this is a point “unmarked” by any good consulting firm or project manager applying sound principles of proper project management. But the devil is in the details! In the vast majority of cases, the expected results speak a language that does not help to engage and enthuse people. To the results we want to achieve on the business level, we must necessarily add those we need to achieve on the personal level, thinking of all employees and stakeholders involved in the project, if we are to bind company and people well in a common goal to be achieved. The British call this WIIIFM: what’s in it for me. What’s in it for me?
3. Increasing energy in the team
   Energy in business is an unknown word. People are thought to have infinite capacity on a physical, mental and emotional level. But the sad reality is that our companies are becoming more and more places where chronic fatigue, stress, lack of real involvement, inability to concentrate, unbridled multitasking, inability to listen to each other, and I could go on and on in the list of elements that take energy away from the people involved in any project, negatively impacting final performance. So I have to ask myself what specific actions I can put in place to increase the energy of the work team at the three levels mentioned: physical, mental and emotional. Over the past 10 years of projects carried out in companies–of all sizes–we have shown that the energy factor alone destroys dozens of potential causes of failure.
4. Accurately establish the team’s key set of habits
   Even today in many companies people still believe that codified processes, tools and organizational charts are the true mirror of reality, when in practice it is only people’s daily habits that direct what is achieved and how it is achieved. A key principle of the Lean^Lifestyle® is called. Habit Management and aims to provide the basic elements for designing and monitoring habits that are functional in achieving an outcome, while eliminating habits that prove dysfunctional. This work must be done inescapably for every new project in the company. Don’t kid yourself that the old rules of change management still work.
5. Define and activate “change agents” by developing the right skills
   Many people are still under the illusion that it will be the heroic project manager or the figure of a nostalgic team captain that will lead to success. This is no longer true. We all live with a strong need for connection inside and outside the company, so much so that this is being exploited by both multinational social networking giants around the world and modern forms of political association. Creating within the company, and within business transformation projects, a true network of change agents is the most powerful way to ensure success for the entire initiative. What skills will we need to develop for these figures? The ones they don’t teach you in school or university and very little in the company. Some examples: creative problem solving, communication, collaboration, effective delegation, feedback techniques, critical reading of context. The most important competency: ability to change quickly.

The challenge of technical and social excellence

If we want to achieve results in the digital era we are living, and sustain them over time, entrepreneurs and managers are called upon to build organizational models that ensure the achievement of technical excellence along with social excellence. The goal is to deliver maximum value for customers and the market, seizing all the opportunities offered by this period of profound technological evolution, but at the same time fully enhancing the potential of the people in the company, increasing their well-being as a guarantee of sustainability and growth in results over time. Only in this way do companies become places of growth, prosperity and social development, protecting themselves from the risks of overwork, stress and people frustration typical of many modern work environments. And above all, protecting themselves from the high risk of failure of various initiatives, as the past teaches us.

A challenge, marked by difficulties, obstacles and failures, but one that deserves to be faced and overcome.