Why Change Fails
Change leadership and change management are critical skills that shape a nonprofit’s capacity to effectively advance its mission, raise more money, and improve its operations. Change can either be self-directed (from internal decision-making or innovation programs) or happen in response to new circumstances (from external events or shifting trends).
The rise of technology and social media over the past 20 years have accelerated the pace of change in many ways, putting increasing pressure on nonprofit leaders to adapt, grow, innovate, and introduce new ways of working. But many nonprofit leaders – no matter what stage of their career they’re in – are inadvertently making it harder for their organizations, their teams, and themselves to successfully adopt change and move forward with new ways of working.
Knowing why change initiatives fail can help leaders honestly assess how ready their organization is for a given change and avoid common pitfalls to help ensure the change’s success.
While change initiatives can fail for any number of reasons, here are some of the most common I’ve seen over nearly 20 years of working as a consultant and senior executive, and they’re supported by research.
1) Your Executive Sponsor is Absent
An executive sponsor is a leader on your organization’s most senior leadership team who will be the champion for a change. This is most often the leader who oversees the area that will be most affected by the change or the area that will be responsible for keeping the change going over time. Across more than 20 years of best practices research, change management research leader Prosci has found that active and visible executive sponsorship – throughout the entire process of making a change – is the greatest overall contributor to the success of change initiatives.
Unfortunately, many executive sponsors have a “hit-and-run” approach to leading change. They focus entirely on preparing to announce the change and making the big announcement but then fail to stay engaged as their staff work to implement the change throughout the organization. They don’t show up to meetings, put off making decisions, and aren’t visible and available in a way to show that this change effort is a top priority for the organization. This lack of engagement and visibility often leads to derailed change efforts within a few months of the initial announcement.
2) You Have the Wrong Executive Sponsor (or Don’t Have One at All)
This happens often with change initiatives that will disrupt and improve an organization’s culture, and my colleagues in the Justice, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging space are seeing this happen over and over again in organizations that call them in for support. If you are communicating to staff, volunteers, and the people you serve that changing the culture of your organization is a top priority, then you have to show it by making the Executive Director/CEO or Board Chair the executive sponsor for the initiative.
With surging interest over the last few years in bringing an equity lens to the way our social impact organizations work, too many organizations are delegating responsibility and ownership of this important work to leaders or employee resource groups who haven’t been given the authority, budget, or support to bring these changes to life. Having the wrong executive sponsor – or failing to name one at all – increases the chance that your organization will fail at making the intended change.
3) You Forgot to Define Success
Many organizations make the mistake of defining the success of a change effort as the implementation of a new system, the announcement of a new policy, or some other key milestone that marks the beginning – not the end – of a change effort. The success measures for change efforts need to focus on the level of training and adoption, staff or stakeholder feedback on how well the change is going, and adopting assessments to ensure staff are ready and able to successfully implement the change. Without a clear definition of success, it’s hard for the executive sponsor and the change team to know when the effort is complete.
4) You Don’t Have Communications & Training Plans
Announcing a change is often the easiest part of a change process, but it is only the beginning. While announcing the change well should be part of an overall communications plan about the change effort, most of the communication and training organizations need to do comes after the initial announcement. Lack of awareness about why a change is important and what it will entail is a leading cause of employee resistance to change – and unless your communications and training plans are designed to share information and manage resistance effectively throughout the organization, chances are your executive sponsor and change team will struggle to get folks on board. Developing effective internal communications plans that align with training efforts is one of the ways we at LaFemina & Co. support clients in elevating their change management efforts.
5) You’re Changing Too Much, Too Fast
Change saturation – the situation where an organization has tried to implement a number of changes within a short period of time – is a leading cause of resistance to new change among employees. This is also sometimes called change fatigue or change overwhelm. Over the past few years, we’ve learned collectively that lots of change all at once can be incredibly difficult to manage. Failing to prioritize and plan out key change initiatives that are internally driven can lead to staff shutting down, finding undesirable workarounds, failing to adopt any of the new changes, and burning out because they don’t have the bandwidth to handle new externally driven change on top of all the change you’re making internally.
6) You Yourself Aren’t Ready to Change
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy
As a leader, you have to be willing to do the personal work to change with your organization and your team. This means moving on from old ways of working, using the new systems and processes you’re introducing, and being truly bought in to the changes your organization is adopting. You don’t need to be an expert in every change your organization is making, but you do need to prioritize learning about those changes and doing your best to model how to implement them. When leaders fail to do this, it shows – and it creates a strong disincentive for your team to put any effort or any toward the changes.
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This isn’t an exhaustive list, but knowing these common reasons why change fails can help you effectively prioritize which changes to focus on now (and in the future) and where you’ll need support to increase the chance of change success. If you need help planning and implementing your next big change, we’re here to help! Schedule a free consultation with us now.