Sustainable Change: Planning, Emotions, Ownership, Confidence and Clarity

"How can we ... free ourselves from our addiction to episodic change and move to a much more healthy habit of continuous business improvement?" is the very pertinent question asked by a senior BP executive, Fiona Macleod, at the recent Wharton Leadership Conference. Her thoughts on the subject are interesting as she has lead several major change initiatives including the restructuring of BP's european marketing business and more recently the US Convenience retail business.

From the full article describing Macleod's intervention, here is my pick of the most relevant:

Many change initiatives lack sustainability:

• New leaders are often more concerned with "making a big splash" than with following through on a long-term plan to monitor change and keep the program on track.
• Organizations often revert to old habits because employees do not understand why change is needed, or they lack the tools and training required to sustain the new approach
• Nothing changes because ownership of the change rests with an external team or consultants, rather than with the leaders responsible for running the business.

"As business leaders, we're very good at the rational part" of change: Identifying what's wrong and how to fix it. But the soft side of change management -- in terms of really engaging people -- is just as important. If people get it intellectually but don't get it emotionally, I don't believe the change will be sustained."

"Confidence is absolutely crucial in making change stick. If people are confident in their leadership, themselves and the business purpose, you are way more likely to get a change that is sustainable and actually turns into continuous improvement,"

"it's very easy to get addicted to the change pattern by not getting the change right in the first place, not making the tough calls or bold decisions up-front, maybe going for something half-way, and then allowing things to slip back."

And for leaders busy restructuring and planning lay-offs, read this as an advice:

"I put my winning, end-state organization in place from day one" rather than waiting to decide which employees would stay ... and which would leave," MacLeod stated. "We had people who knew they would be leaving in 18 months and they stayed motivated for the entire period because we had been very straight with them. People want and expect clarity from their leaders."