11 Keys to Change

Over the years, I have collected a list of 11 keys to successful organizational change.

1. Break denial in order to make the need for change obvious to all.  Use data, debate and dialog to bring out the "brutal truth."  (A key concept from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins, Harper Business, 2001 - summary attached: Download good_to_great.doc [Word, 61KB])
2. Set "unreasonable" targets and expectations, to help force new ways of thinking and acting.
3. Disrupt routines:  structures, decision making, communicating, systems.
4. Listen to different voices:  outsiders, newcomers, heretics, the young, those who differ from corporate norms.
5. Paint and communicate a compelling vision of the future.
6. Conduct many experiments; pilots that are achievable, impact-ful and provide for learning.
7. Walk the talk.  If you want others to change, you must live the change first.
8. Seek many small, early wins.
9. Design and participate in training and development.  Leaders need to help teach, and to be taught during the change process.
10. Create deep and broad, omni-directional communications.  Tell stories that illustrate the change.  And listen - listen - listen.
11. Keep at it.  Keep turning the flywheel a bit faster each round.  Persist - real change will take 3-5 years.

For key sources I have used over the years, see my Leading Change book list.  In addition to these books, I have used materials from a course I attended some years ago at the Darden School of Business.