What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management

Corporate transformations still have a miserable success rate: About three-quarters of change efforts either fail to deliver the anticipated benefits or are abandoned entirely. And because flawed implementation is most often blamed for such failures, organizations have focused on improving execution. But poor execution is only part of the problem; the authors’ four-year study of 62 corporate transformations suggests that misdiagnosis is equally to blame. Before worrying about how to change, they write, executive teams need to figure out what to change—in particular, what to change first. They can do this by fully understanding three things: the catalyst for transformation, the organization’s underlying quest (is it global presence, customer focus, nimbleness, innovation, or sustainability?), and the leadership capabilities needed to see it through. J.C. Penney, Norske Skog, Acer, and other classic cases illustrate the authors’ points, and the article includes a “quest audit” to help companies identify their transformation priorities.