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Common Change Management Pitfalls

December 5th, 2007

Poor communications (e.g., of goals, methods, motives, commitment)
Unclear rationale for change
Lack of understanding of the urgency of change
Inadequate employee mobilization and engagement
Lack of courage and risk-taking (may cause change to fail by default)
Complacency (resistance to change because of prior success)
Too many initiatives at one time, overloading change management capacity
Mixed messages from top and middle management
Short-term thinking and lack of follow-through, especially in long-term initiatives
Changed or diminished priorities; lack of focus
Cultural mismatch in mergers and acquisitions that seek to blend two contrasting cultures
Lack of leadership support, commitment, or modeling behavior
Poor market analysis; poor planning
Underestimation of barriers; lack of due diligence

Original writing date: September 20, 2005

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Business, Business Rules, Dynetech, Larry Pino. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Common Change Management Pitfalls”

  1. Earl Howell Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 1:39 pm

    Here are some others:

    Failure of existing personnel to give support to incoming new management

    Inability to act due to existing outdated policies, procedures, red tape

    Failure to accept the fact that what you’ve been doing for years doesn’t work anymore and needs to change (“That’s the way we’ve always done it….”)

    Failure to establish uniform measurements, time windows, etc by which change success/failure can be guaged to determine if the new changes are working.

  2. Enterprise Risk Management Myths | MyRiskControl Enterprise Risk Management Solutions Says:
    July 15th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    [...] This is one of the most important aspects of a well thought out Enterprise Risk Management system.  There must be management and employee buy-in at all levels; otherwise ERM implementations tend to suffer from the same pitfalls that plague most change management: [...]