What everyone gets wrong about change management

Three quarters of change efforts flop. Poor execution is only partly to blame
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When corporate transformations fail, people are quick to point a finger at poor execution as the culprit. But in today’s fast-paced digital era, that blame is often misguided, say the authors of a recent HBR article, N. Anand and Jean-Louis Barsoux. “Often organizations pursue the wrong changes – especially in complex and fast-moving environments, where decisions about what to transform in order to remain competitive can be hasty,” they write.  

Anand and Barsoux studied 62 corporate transformations over the course of four years. They found that  successful change management requires leaders to examine and align three critical factors: the catalyst for transformation, the organization’s underlying quest, and the leadership capabilities needed to see it through.

In this article, they dive deep into these three elements, including the five most common types of quests that organization pursue. Based on their observations of stalled transformations, Anand and Barsoux also reveal the common pitfalls that can reduce your odds of achieving lasting change. Get the full article.

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Carla Rudder is a community manager and program manager for The Enterprisers Project. She enjoys bringing new authors into the community and helping them craft articles that showcase their voice and deliver novel, actionable insights for readers.