Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#144 5 things that make change succeed or fail in an organisation

• Mel Loy • Season 1 • Episode 144

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Here we see a Tale of Two Transformations... and with it, the large divide between experiences that became the catalyst for this episode's creation. 

This divide: why a change can thrive in one organisation but collapse in another — even when they start with the same strategy, consultants, and goals?

In this episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast, we explore five universal truths about what makes or breaks transformation. Through the stories of two very different organisations, Happiness Co and Sadness Co, we explore how leadership alignment, culture, capability, progress, and people can completely change the outcome of a transformation effort.

It’s a tale of what happens when change is driven with people, not at them, and what you can do to avoid becoming the tale of a failing change transformation. Listen in now!


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What makes change work well in one company but fail in another? Is it the systems, the processes, the people, leadership, governance, or maybe some or all of the above? It's a question many smarter people than me have attempted to unpack in many different ways over the years from the likes of John Kotter to, I guess, more modern day geniuses like Michael Bungyay Stanier, and, everyone in between. But having been involved in numerous change programs over the years as a change comms specialist, I've had the opportunity to observe the great successes and the big failures. And when reflecting on these observations, it occurred to me that there were five big commonalities across all scenarios. What are they? That's what today's episode is all about. Hello, friend, and welcome back to another episode of Less Chatter More Matter, the Communication podcast. My name is Mel Loy and I'm recording this episode on the Lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, Brisbane. And on today's episode, I'm going to share what I think are five universal truths about what it takes to make change, succeed, or fail in organisations. And of course, this is the world according to Mel, so feel free to share with me your own observations. But rather than list off a bunch of facts and observations, I think these lessons are best told in a story. Like all good lessons. So I'm going to reflect on two stories in particular that show both the success and the failure, but obviously de-identifying them and... A little bit of amalgamation of some other projects I've worked on. So let's imagine there's two businesses and let's call these two businesses, Happiness Co and Sadness Co. Very original. I know. And like the start of the Dickens novel, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times. And like Romeo and Juliet, they were two households both alike in dignity. Both organisations were quite large with a core business of customer service. They had people spread out across different sites, many of who were whom were frontline workers. Uh, there were very different backgrounds and capabilities. Both organisations had also recognised a need to transform the world around them, and their customer expectations had changed and they hadn't kept up. Profitability was down; in the case of Happiness Co they had actually been running at a loss for several years. So in short. Both organisations were facing a lot of risk if they didn't transform and they had to rethink everything from the way they were organised to the products and services they offered their values, ways of working technology and systems and skills. So both Happiness Co and Sadness Co. Got big four consulting firms in to design a strategic plan delivered as a million page slide deck, of course. And so far so good. Everybody is on the same track, but. This is where the paths started to diverge and the differences, or rather the cracks for the case of Sadness Co started appearing very early. Which brings us to lesson one of why change fails, and that lesson is leadership alignment is key and good leadership in general. The cracks in leadership in Sadness Co were very evident from the beginning, so you'd see a snide email, a very blunt message. Uh, you know, constantly changing scope, a very dictatorial style from leaders. And this scope change, though not unexpected, was a little bit different. I mean, we all know that change is rarely linear. In fact, it's a given that the change itself will change while you're changing. But Sadness Co took that to a whole new level. And it was all because the CEO and the C-suite had very different ideas of what transformation looks like. And why it mattered to that business. You also had a CEO who stood back and let the sponsor, the C-suite member take the lead without intervening when they really should have. And because of this lack of alignment, not only were there massive scope changes, but also mixed messages coming through. On the one hand, it was about creating better experiences with their people and their customers. But on the other hand, cutting costs was the priority. And these are two opposing forces in a transformation because when you start stripping back what's changing- it's no longer transformation. It's just a few little changes here and there. The flow on impact this then had on the project team and the people most impacted by the change, the employees, was immeasurable. The project team, you can imagine, is going backwards and forwards. Reworking work and planning over and time and time again. They put out messages that then turned out to be inaccurate. Not because they wanted to, but because the scope changed again after the message went out. So they became very wary of what to say and when to the point of silence. And the people actually impacted, Those employees, became more frustrated and anxious because the uncertainty dragged on and on and on. Now, meanwhile over at Happiness Co, there was a very different story being told. A new CEO had been appointed after years of the business operating in the red. The CEO was charismatic, but focused and realised right away the current leadership team was not going to cut it. So over a few months, he cut them. He gradually replaced them with a brand new team of people who were not only smart, but experts in their fields. They saw the value in a collaborative approach and were all strongly aligned on what they were there to achieve. The Happiness Co executives were all consistent in their messaging, so they really helped people stay focused on what they were there to achieve, and importantly, the why, which remained on the customers they were there to serve, not on the budget. But! as a result of this focus, the budget started operating in the green for the first time in years and delivered a surplus. Suddenly, people had a really strong sense of purpose and it started to show in how they worked with customers and each other. When they talk about the change, they all contribute to the messaging. It's not a one man show, and it's a result of a very collaborative leadership culture, unlike at Sadness Co, where there was a very dictatorial, hierarchical culture in place. So not only is this about leadership alignment, it's also just about having great leaders in place, not managers or dictators. Great leaders are people who inspire and motivate, but they're honest and authentic when they do that, and they genuinely demonstrate alignment. It's also a reminder of the importance of the leadership amplification effect, which basically means that whatever a leader does or says matters more than if somebody else does or says it. When you're a leader, you are on show and people are paying attention, so it's obvious if you don't have alignment, and you will absolutely see this impact your people and your change. So that's lesson one, leadership alignment and great leadership. Lesson number two, have a culture that's open to change and that starts at the top. In the case of Happiness Co. They had a leadership team who were excited by the possibility of change, and it trickled down to the frontline workers as well. A big part of building that culture of change was being open and honest with their team members, but it was also about demonstrating that sense of excitement. While acknowledging there were unknowns and there were going to be some things that felt uncomfortable. Now, importantly, for Happiness Co, they kept bringing the why back for the change to what mattered most for their people, doing better for the people they served. They clearly demonstrated how the strategy and brand helped address the pain points their people had raised. And to build that culture, they had to focus on building the adaptability of their people. And that's one of the big differences in these cases. Happiness Co built, adaptability, Sadness Co kept telling everyone, they just had to be more resilient, basically. They had to suck it up. And the culture at Sadness Co was not one that was ready for change. Change had always happened to people, so of course it felt really uncomfortable and they weren't open to it. But also, change had also been done so badly in the past, and people were so reliant on the status quo just to get them through every day. That change was never going to be easy in this organisation, and the leaders certainly didn't help this, especially when they kept pushing the status quo rather than helping to drive transformation. So lesson two, build a culture that's open to change. Lesson number three. Capability matters and more than you might think. It is all well and good to give people in your organisations opportunities to step up into new and different roles. But if they aren't provided with the mentoring, the leadership, the tools and the training they need, then they're set up to fail. And if they're not open to coaching and learning, they will force themselves to fail and take the team with them. Which is exactly what happened at Sadness Co. So they built a project team and allowed some people from the, within the business to lead it, and that's a great opportunity. These people had wonderful relationships within the business and years and years of organisational knowledge, but they had never led a transformational project of this kind and scale. So they were very out of their depth, and that started to show very quickly. The project manager not only had limited experience themselves, but they actively avoided consultation and collaboration, and they were so dismissive of the inputs from the subject matter experts that those people just up and left. It wasn't once off, it was over and over again, and there was zero accountability. If you do not have the capability, buy it in, but in doing so. Make sure they're the people who will be able to build great relationships with people in the project team and the board of business, so they earn enough trust to get things done and respectfully challenge things when they need to. Sadness Co did bring in some so-called experts and some super experienced people, but it was obvious from the get go that they had some personality issues that were going to be a problem for the team. The egos were huge. They were very fixed in their opinions and could often be just downright rude to other people. Needless to say, the messenger effect kicked in and after a while, anything these people said started lacking any weight and was pretty much ignored. And in addition, we have another project manager who treated people with total disregard; to the point that there was a revolving door of people in the project team simply because this PM didn't like what they were saying and their expertise didn't align with her view. This same PM in a standup, got to the comms section and said, no disrespect, but it's time for the fluffy stuff, The comms. Needless to say, she didn't earn anyone's respect that day, so she just made her job harder for herself. Now, capability is also about understanding roles and responsibilities on a change project. In the case of sadness Co, there was a lot of, this is a comms thing. Simply because it involved some kind of communication and this outlook came from a place of inexperience. None of the people saying these things had ever worked on a change project team before. They had been SMEs in the business who had put their hand up for the project. So as constant education and discussion about the fact that stakeholder engagement was in fact their job, not the comms team, they had to be out there talking to their stakeholders in the business, getting them on board, identifying and removing roadblocks and so on. And this lack of knowledge was also seen in the constant discussions around what is a comms decision and what is a business decision. For example, as a comms consultant, we were asked questions like, should we offer X refund to these customers or Y refund. Mate, that is not my decision. That is a business decision, not a comms decision. I can give you an opinion based on what that might mean for your reputation, but ultimately that is a business decision. Now meanwhile, over at Happiness Co, they realised they did not have the in-house expertise to lead the work. So they went about actively recruiting People who had done this before were great coaches and team players, and were focused on business success, not just their own advancement. Some of these were permanent new roles. Others were consultants who brought in specific areas of expertise to support the project. And together the team forged ahead and made things happen, bringing in the voices of the people into the business and their customers to help shape and implement the strategy and continuously checking to see what they could improve. So even though they all had their own areas of expertise, they were still approachable and coachable. The result is a change project that kept progressing at pace that had identified and mitigated risks, and a really engaged project team that stuck around for the long haul. This brings us to lesson four, which is progress matters. Do not let perfection get in the way. The challenge I see in many projects, whether it's change or developing a new strategy, et cetera, is some key people can become very, very attached to it. It becomes their baby. It's great that they care, but the flip side of that is A, they forget that nobody else cares as much about their project as they do, and they just can't understand that. B, it can lead them close to other potential solutions. And C, it can lead to perfectionism rearing its ugly head. Now in the case of Sadness Co. This is what happened. The project owner was constantly tinkering to perfect the model, which meant costly delays and missing the opportunity to spend the budget on the transformation when they had it. And then as a result, after 18 months, they had to water down the transformation to the point. It just became a structure change. Not to mention, they had been asked multiple times if perhaps a less complex solution could work better, and they pushed back because they'd already put so much work into perfecting this model. Not because it was best for the project or the people, but because they were so attached to it. Happiness Co, on the other hand, took an iterative approach and they were experimenting, but still moving forward because there was a strong focus on the ultimate outcomes. There were strong guidelines around what they were focused on. They were very honest in saying they weren't going to get everything right and they would need to shift and play as they went. And people were fine with that because that expectation was set early. Also, By implementing the change and the transformation in bite-sized chunks, they lessened that feeling of overwhelm and they were able to remove a lot of interdependencies that could have meant they'd have to do one big shift all at once, which is fought with much more risk than not. So at Happiness Co, they went with progress over perfection, which meant they actually got progress. Alright, the final lesson is people matter and ignore them at your peril. Change is about people, not budgets or deliverables. When you have it the other way round, bad things happen. This is where co-creation and authentic, genuine collaboration and consultation really make a difference. It's about gathering the voices of the people and using those to help shape the way forward. It's also about responding in a timely and open way to feedback, not just letting it slip into the abyss. And if you're not putting people's experience at the change of the change right at the centre of your decision making, then you can absolutely guarantee that good people with great talent will leave. So again, this is where we see some very glaring differences between Happiness Co and Sadness Co. Happiness Co's executives kept coming back to the same question, what does this mean for our people? It was very much around how to make the change as smooth, but still exciting. As possible for them and inspire change in their behaviours. So they did the work, they got out there and they talked to people from all over the organisation and customers and found out what really mattered to them, what they were worried about, where the pain points were, and so on. But importantly, they not only listened, but they showed they listened by closing that feedback loop very openly and transparently. Every change that has happened as a part of this transformation Has been handled very thoughtfully and decisions on execution have absolutely been shifted. If they realised it wasn't going to be a good execution for their people, for example, if they had to let some people go, they wanted to make sure that the whole process was still a respectful experience and give them all the possible tools to continue their careers elsewhere. But over at Sadness Co. Sadly, the story wasn't so positive, and as executives narrowed their focus on budget cuts and continued to shift the goalposts for the transformation, people were left in the dark. The uncertainty dragged on and on. We are talking for over 18 months. Part of this was because those executives were listening to the sycophants, the Yes men who told them what they wanted to hear. Instead of those who really knew what was going on and the impacts of the dec, the decisions they were making. And meanwhile, hundreds of team members were left in limbo, wondering when and if this change would ever happen, what would it look like, and if they'd still have a job. Unsurprisingly, this agonising weight and lack of answers meant good people walked out the door. It was made even worse when rules around roles and responsibilities were put in place that seemed to apply to some people and not others. So in the end, what do we have? Well, friends... at Happiness Co and Sadness Co. The projects are still going, but at Happiness Co, there's been lots of great progress, great retention and attraction of talent, and an increase in profits. At Sadness Co. It is so uncertain what's happening and what's going to happen that nobody seems to remember what they were aiming for in the first place. The transformation is no longer a transformation. It's just a few poorly executed changes here and there, and the executives are still arguing over dollars and ignoring advice from the people living it every day. And unsurprisingly, the bottom line is not doing well. So here you have it, A Tale of Two Transformations, and it's now time for the wrap up and the five lessons that I shared today from these two very different experiences. Lesson number one. Leadership alignment is key and good leadership. In general. If your leaders are not aligned and if they aren't demonstrating great leadership, then your change will fail no matter how great your comms plan is or your change plan. Lesson number two, you need to develop a culture that's open to change, and that starts with leaders as well as building capability for changing your business. Stop asking people to just put up with it to be more resilient. Instead, get them involved and co-create solutions. Lesson three. Capability matters more than you might think. Having the right people leading the change effort is crucial. If you don't have the talent or experience in-house, buy it in and use it as an opportunity to mentor and upskill your in-house team. Lesson number four, progress matters more than perfection. The project is not your baby. If you're more worried about making it perfect than getting stuff done and iterating, then you will never get anything done and you will miss opportunities. And lesson number five, people matter. Ignore them at your peril. Decisions in change aren't just about what's good for the business. The decisions about executing the change have to have people's experience at the centre. When you do that, you retain and attract great talent. You make sure you get into the truth of what's really going on, which means you can make better decisions and you're more likely to make a transformation that actually makes a difference. All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining into Less Chatter, More Matter, and as always, get in touch. Let me know what you think. Otherwise, keep doing amazing things. Bye for now.