Change: What the Books Say

A year ago a group of twelve senior managers taking part in the Manufacturing Leaders Programme had to identify a subject they wished to investigate as part of their team project, the decision was easy. For a year of teaching input we had encountered a variety of issues but the common theme to all was change. All of us had personal experience of change and were becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of guidance on implementation and making change stick. We wanted to unlock the secrets to successful change within organisations. Many a book has been written about this and whole industries have grown up to support it. And yet we are still faced with the harsh reality that most change initiatives are not successful, in fact, much literature quotes 70% as the failure rate. So as manufacturing managers, as change leaders do we accept that this is an unalterable fact of business life? Is 30% success all we can hope for? Are we powerless to change this? Our response was ‘no’, and so the journey began to look for those factors which contribute to the 30% that are successful.