For companies, change initiatives have become essential to survive, but most fail at executing them. Why so?
To survive today, businesses constantly need to adapt themselves to the many disruptions our world is undergoing today. The risk of disappearing from the stage is massive for companies. Leading companies aren’t spared from that issue either. Can you guess how many current Fortune 500 companies on the S&P500 are predicted to disappear in 10 years? It’s 40 per cent, according to a study from Washington University´s Olin Business School.
The enterprise that does not innovate inevitably ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present…the decline will be fast.”
The rise of the sharing economy, innovative start-ups, automatization & AI, open-source tools such as the 3D printer, game-changing technologies such as the blockchain and so forth are heavily disrupting the market nowadays.
In order to react accordingly, companies are trying their best to modernize themselves and build up an agile environment. Although companies are initiating a lot of internal changes, they are stricken with uncertainty: How to establish a framework supporting agility? How to equip oneself with the right tools and mindsets to face the era of digitalization? Are there any best practices in change management? Do change initiatives really keep their promise? And if not, why? Is it because the expectations in regards to change initiatives are simply set too high? Is it realistic to expect change from the employees’ behaviour and mindset?
Effective change: A Phantom?
A lot of question arise when it comes to get a deeper understanding of change initiatives… And companies often fail to implement change strategies with success: according to recent studies of Gallup, 70% of change initiatives fail.
The Future of Leadership Initiative 2014 interviewed executives from various industries in order to investigate how leaders succeed in bringing change within their companies. We would like to share with you the insights and best practices of those executives in our blog. Here’s the first article of our series on successful change management, “Change initiatives can fail even before they start – here’s why”!
