Making Successful Organizational Changes Within Your Company

An oft-cited statistic underlines the challenge of implementing true change within an organization: 70 percent of these initiatives fail. Why? In part, it’s easier to pay lip service to desired change—even with the best of intentions—than it is to change policy and behavior on a collective scale. Humans also tend to develop habits, which can be difficult to change, especially when employees already have a host of regular job duties to juggle. When change becomes confusing or overwhelming, people tend to push back, potentially hindering progress.

The point is: Making successful organization changes within your company requires short-term and long-term vision. Here are a few strategies to consider as you work toward doing so.

Define Problems and Challenges

Sure, envisioning the outcome of any organizational change is important—eventually. But first, you need to define the pain point or problem you’re trying to solve. As the colloquial saying goes, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” That’s not to say that your organization can’t benefit from innovating and improving upon current practices, but rather that it’s counterproductive to implement change for the sake of feeling progressive.

As one expert writes for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the first step is simply “defining the problem correctly.” In other words, what do you need and want to change? Only then can you come up with a concrete plan to make it happen. Without a firm grasp on the problem you want to address, you have no overarching goal around which to orient your actions.

 Take the Temperature Throughout

One of the most beneficial things leadership personnel can do is gather feedback from employees consistently throughout an initiative. Gathering intel from the ground up helps decision makers gauge the effectiveness of their efforts and can even help orchestrate a course change in response to any hurdles that emerge.

Here’s what one organizational expert has to say for Forbes: “Tracking progress and measuring for effectiveness is one of the most important pieces of making sure progress towards a shared vision continues at the pace you want.” One method of achieving this? Surveys.

The key is collecting honest feedback periodically throughout an organizational change. If employees are merely telling managers what they want to hear, it only serves to create a feedback loop. Conducting live polls, on the other hand, allows participants to contribute queries and answers anonymously using a mobile device.

When employees feel they can be honest without retribution, they feel empowered to speak up. This, in turn, produces more valuable insights that go a long way in refining organizational change in a productive manner. Employees also appreciate the feeling that their leaders are taking their experiences and opinions into account. After all, they are the ones most affected by organizational change on a daily basis.

 Implement Long-Term Solutions

It’s important to treat change like an ongoing process rather than a case-closed endeavor. Rushing will only hurt the end result and frustrate everyone involved along the way. It’s important to outline an implementation timeline that takes into account a variety of factors: budget, materials, training, etc. In other words, leaders are responsible for setting expectations while giving employees enough time to prepare and adjust. It’s also important to check back in after the fact to make sure any transitions your company undertook went well and are sustaining.

To make successful organizational changes within your company, define what challenges you aim to solve, collect honest feedback from everyone involved and stick to a long-term plan. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, true and lasting change takes time.