Identifying the Reasons behind the Failures of Corporate Change Efforts

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Change Management
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Over the years, hundreds of companies have tried to make themselves into notably
better competitors and such companies comprise of large companies like Ford and small ones
like the landmark communications; the General Motors, Eastern Airlines and many more. All
these efforts have undergone many banners like reengineering, total quality, cultural change,
total quality management, right sizing and turnaround (Kuipers et al.). However, in most of
the cases, the primary aim has always been same and this is to build significant changes in the
way businesses are controlled and managed for helping in coping up with new and more
demanding market environment. Only some of such efforts of corporate change have been
prosper and very few have been failed utterly. This paper is going to elaborate on identifying
the main reasons behind the failures of these corporate change efforts.
To begin with the most significant reason of these failure is the fact that most of
change efforts have not established a high sense of urgency. Many of them started when
some groups or individuals have started to look hard at the competitive situation of a
company, its market position, financial performance and technological trends (Tzokas et al.).
They basically focus more on the potential drip in the revenue at the time when any important
patent gets expired, or the 5 trends in decreasing margins in a key business or any emerging
market which each and every one seems to be not considering. It is then when they find out
ways for communication about this information dramatically and broadly, particularly in
respective of potential crisis or any great opportunities which are timely. The very first step is
very crucial as of the fact that just starting a transformation program needs a strong
cooperation of many people and in absence of motivation, no one would help and hence, the
efforts then go nowhere.
In comparison to the other phases in change process, the first step could sound very
easy but it is actually not. More than fifty percent of the organisations get fail in the first step
itself (Ward). The main reasons for their failure here is that many of the times their

2CHANGE MANAGEMENT
executives underestimates the fact that how hard it could be to drive out the individuals from
their comfort zones. Sometimes they coarsely underestimate how successful they have
already been in increasing the urgency and sometimes they lack in patience. In most of the
cases, the executives become paralyzed by the possibilities prevailing downside and worry
more about the employees with seniority as they think that they would become defensive and
their moral would drop down, that they events would spin out of their control, that the short
term businesses would result in jeopardizing, that they would be blamed for forming a crisis.
Secondly, it is not creating a much strong guiding coalition. Most of the renewal
programs frequently start small group of people, either one or two (Lane et al.). In cases of
any victorious transformation efforts, the coalition of leadership keeps on growing more and
more over the time period. However, when some of the minimum masses are not attained
early in the effort, there is nothing of so much worthy takes place. It is frequently said that
most of the changes is nearly impossible to happen unless the primary head of the company
plays an energetic and active part in supporting. In any transformation that is successful, the
president or the chairman or the division general manager, with six or sixteen or sixty people
come together and develop a shared commitment for performing excellently through the
renewal (Fox and Keisling). In both the large and small organisation, a prosperous guiding
team might comprise of only 3 to 6 people at the very initial year of the renewal effort, while
in the big companies, this coalition need to grow to 20 to 50 people before much progress
could be made in the third step and beyond. The core of the group is always made by the
senior managers but sometimes one may find the board members, a representative or a
powerful union leader too. As because of the fact that the guiding coalition comprise of the
ones who are not among the any of the senior management team, this tend to function outside
of the day to day hierarchy and this could be unreasonable but is also important as well. If
prevailing hierarchy works good, there is no requirement for any significant transformation to