Critical Conditions for Transformation Success
Transformation programmes do not just happen; they have to be set up for success.
In 1995, Prof John P Kotter published an article in the Harvard Business Review, which has become seminal to our understanding of transformational change. In Why Transformation Efforts Fail, Kotter identified some 10 key factors as to why large-scale transformation efforts run into trouble or fail. His research and observations correlated with other research. For example, CSC Index (founded by James Champy, the father of business re-engineering), which I worked for at the time, conducted a global survey of some 250 companies and change programmes and found that:
- Speed correlates with success - programmes that develop momentum quickly were more likely to succeed than those that went at a more measured pace. The belief was that speed does not give time for the "antibodies to grow" (antibodies being the factions that resist change and find ways to stop it)
- A focus on clearly defined business outcomes, recognised as valuable to the customer, are more likely to be successful than "mindless head-count reduction". When business re-engineering is badly set-up and people are poorly motivated then they became synonymous with head-count reduction. However, when properly focused, motivated and positioned, business re-engineering achieved extraordinary levels of break-through performance improvement as recognised by the customer.
- Steering and governance rather than project management are essential for transformational programme success. Sponsors and other executives who really understood their roles in setting direction, identifying priorities, resolving critical issues and conflicts and finally staying focused on benefit realisation were far more successful than the majority of programmes which failed on one or more fronts.
The real responsibility of an interim programme manager; assessing and setting the critical conditions for programme success
So, after a couple of decades of transformational change, we should be pretty good at this - right? Wrong! Although we have developed better, more rounded capabilities the failure rate is still too high. This is not just a stigma; who wants to be associated with failure? This is a criminal waste of time, effort and money.
Traditional forms of consulting typically fail to help a client transition from vision to execution, and there is a lack of execution capability on both sides. So it is often incumbent upon a hired hand or interim manager to pick up the reins and deliver the programme. This is not without its challenges:
Often the programme for transformational change has been 'shaped' and even signed-off before the interim programme manager arrives. I am going to argue - somewhat controversially - that it is a fundamental responsibility of an interim programme manager to assess the situation, using a technique I will describe in more detail below, from the point of view of "Critical Conditions for Success" to put more of a positive spin on Kotter's Why Transformation Efforts Fail.
The governance for the programme has been set up and again this may not be optimal; in some cases you can see it is going to be suicidal. However, re-setting governance is going to involve an awful lot of people losing face and facing reputation risk damage as a result.
And what about the Programme Charter? Most companies today have well-designed processes for initiating major programmes - often expressed in a Programme Charter - but how good is it really? Who wrote it and what was their particular agenda? Are the outcomes of the programme clearly defined and articulated?
My point of view - having been around major change programmes for at least two decades - is that an interim or consultant has a duty of care to the client, which is to ensure that this is the right thing for the client to do. It takes courage, experience, wisdom, skill, and skin like a rhino-hide to challenge this conventional wisdom. However, I have personally seen millions of pounds wasted and customer and shareholder value destroyed because the company was intent on proceeding with a programme which frankly should have been stopped, re-set or, in some cases something fundamentally different done. Programmes gather baggage, ownership, reputations and risk unless they are properly conceived and set up for success. Most companies are very good at starting new initiatives. However, ask the question: 'when was the last time you had the courage to stop something that was not going in the right direction' and it gets uncomfortable?
So, somewhat controversially, I am going to recommend that the first thing an interim programme manager does - when seduced by the radiant transformation programme that his or her minder has attracted him or her to - is to spend the first 5, 10, 15 or 20 days - depending on the scale of the programme - doing a constructive challenging assessment of the programme. This requires courage - but also should be consistent with the ethical inclination of any independent professional to not want to be associated with failure. This might result in the interim walking away from a potentially lucrative engagement or it might, in the case of an enlightened client, result in the interim being able to re-set a programme for success. My experience tells me, however, it is always harder to re-set a failing programme than to set one up for success. And it takes great courage on to stop a programme where so many reputations are involved.
How to assess a programme's chances of success objectively?
Assuming you have the opportunity to conduct such an assessment, how do you do it?
There are two key things to do at the outset:
- Build your generic set of 10 Conditions for Success based upon John P Kotter's HBR article - or if you would like a more positive set of forward-looking conditions, please contact me.
- Second, identify all the key stakeholders you need to talk to inside, outside and around the edges of the programme.
At this stage you will probably also want to dust off your Excel spreadsheet skills and build a simple but effective way of processing the results of your assessment (individual and composite) so that you can portray, interpret and feed-back the results in the form of classic spider diagrams.
The best way to do this is to get the stakeholders to complete the 10-question assessment using a 1 to 5 scale - you can do this together during the interview or you can use the interview to explain the meaning of each condition and then get them to send the results back to you.
The composite picture of results will usually tell you that; people are all over the place' in terms of the way they see the likely success of the programme. The individual profiles will give you the detailed picture of how individuals see individual conditions - feeding back these results will usually be done anonymously to protect the innocent.
Forming your judgement
It is then up to you as the interim programme manager to form your conclusions and feedback to your client sponsor:
Is this programme so far off track in terms of likely success that it should be abandoned - or at least massively re-shaped? How much intervention is required?
- How likely is it that we could get alignment around the key stakeholders all pointing in the same direction?
- How likely is it that you will be allowed to re-shape this programme for success given the background and history of the programme?
This is a tough call. Many programme managers believe optimistically that by being on the inside they will have a greater opportunity to re-shape and influence the future direction and therefore success of the programme. This is often a mis-judgement. Once you are a part of the programme, you lose the one-off opportunity to exercise independent, external judgement and 'tell it like it is'. Once you have joined the programme, you are part of the fabric, you become part of the programme's history and reputation - even though you had nothing to do with it - and stakeholders will automatically assume that you will now do what needs to be done. My argument is that if the conditions for success do not exist or cannot be put in place, the likelihood of this programme failing is extremely high.
A view from the 'battle-zone'
To re-inforce that I know 'whereof I speak', in 2007 I was 'seduced' into becoming the interim programme director (not even programme manager, so I thought I had real influence!) to a programme that was clearly in deep trouble. Key indicators included:
- Scope of the programme and its success outcomes were poorly-defined - with many different views as to what it should and should not include
- There was no end-state vision of what success would look like
- An inappropriately constituted steering group, which had no decision-rights and had not even met for eight months! The programme was effectively being run by one senior executive who essentially ignored the interests and wishes of the line management who would implement
- The programme had rolled through three programme managers in less than nine months - I was number four!
- Programme resources were made up entirely of third-party contractors - not a single full-time employee on the programme. The programme not surprisingly had no credibility with the business or anyone else. It also lacked the right mix of skills and experience - no-one on the 'team' had worked on anything so complex before or had relevant subject-matter experience
- The programme had already spent considerable amounts of money - tens of millions of pounds, the majority with a couple of technology vendors and for which there was absolutely nothing to show - not even a working prototype
- The programme needed a further £20m to continue - as far as a pilot, and more funding beyond that to roll-out
- No consideration had been given to roll-out, training or implementation support - in an environment when some 20-30,000 staff would be impacted.
Following my rigorous assessment and recommending the programme should be massively re-shaped or stopped and re-started to avoid further amounts of shareholders' money being wasted, I spent two months re-aligning stakeholders and trying to give the programme some credibility, which I achieved. However, the appropriate governance could not be put in place and too many personal reputations were at stake - face-saving won over the right thing to do and I departed the programme.
It is always uncomfortable, even painful, when personal and professional values and beliefs are not aligned with those of the organisation where one finds oneself working. At the end of the day, two criteria determine what to do: "being true to yourself" and "doing the right thing for the client". Anything else is self-delusion
Peter Boggis is an independent consultant, senior executive coach and business advisor. He works as an associate with, inter alia, nGenera - an innovative research, consulting and advisory firm inspired by the insights of Don Tapscott, author of "Wikinomics" and "Grown Up Digital". He has over 20 years' experience of major transformational change programmes and has conducted dozens of assessments of programmes before, during and after - often leading to significant re-setting.