The Change Management Playbook Is Broken. Here Are 3 Counterintuitive Strategies That Actually Work

In 1995, Harvard professor John Kotter published an article in Harvard Business Review that has shaped how leaders have approached organizational change ever since. Based on his observations of more than 100 executives, he outlined a series of eight steps that he argued were necessary for successful transformation.

Since then, countless change consultants, trained and certified in methodologies based on similar principles, such as ADKAR, have applied his principles diligently, but with meager results. Study after study finds that the vast majority of organizational transformations fail. There is little evidence that Kotter’s principles are effective.

Yet not all transformations fail. Some, like the color revolutions in Eastern Europe, or the struggle for LGBT rights, prevailed under the most difficult conditions. Over five decades, Everett Rogers painstakingly documented successful and unsuccessful change efforts in every field you can imagine. Here are three counterintuitive strategies that actually work.

1. Start With A Majority 

Kotter’s first principle is to create a “sense of urgency.” On his website he stresses how important it is to “build momentum that excites people to pursue a compelling (and clear) vision of the future… together.” The idea is that for change to be successful, you need to communicate it quickly, and at scale, to build momentum.

However, decades of studies suggest otherwise. In fact, research has shown that when we’re presented with facts contrary to our beliefs, we tend to question the evidence rather than our own preconceived notions. There is also a common phenomenon known as the KAP-gap in which shifts in knowledge and attitudes do not necessarily lead to changes in practice.

Another consistent finding is that change tends to be propagated socially, rather than through mass media. This became clear even in early research such as the spread of air conditioners in the 1950s and recruiting civil rights activists during “Freedom Summer” in the 1960s. I provided further examples in my book Cascades.

What we do know is that people tend to conform to the opinions of those around them. The best indicator of what we think and do is what the people around us think and do. So rather than trying to shape opinions, a much more reliable approach is to focus on shaping networks. It is through building dense groups of enthusiasts that an idea can build traction.

So rather than trying to convince everyone at once, start with a small local majority of early apostles. Even if that majority is just three people in a room of five, you can always expand a majority out. Once you’re in the minority, however, you will feel immediate pushback and things will begin to sputter. Never let yourself get there. You are under no obligation to invite the bomb throwers in. Empower enthusiasts instead.

2. Wait For A Trigger 

One uncomfortable truth about change is that it isn’t always possible. The time isn’t always right. Sometimes the opposition is just too powerful, or the idea itself has been discredited. For whatever reason, pushing for change when it is unlikely to succeed is more likely to put you deeper in the hole than to make progress.

What’s crucial for changemakers to grasp is that a trigger eventually emerges that creates a moment. It’s rare that we can predict exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s not too hard to see that one will come eventually and prepare for it. Political revolutions have leveraged this for decades, focusing on particular stress points in which a trigger is likely to emerge.

For example, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe targeted elections that they knew were likely to be falsified. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed Albany campaign, he moved on to Birmingham, because he knew that Bull Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety, was a hothead and likely to employ the type of brutal tactics that would trigger a moment.

In much the same way, the Covid pandemic triggered digital transformation in many organizations. Economic downturns trigger efficiency measures. When a competitor comes out with a hit product, it tends to trigger enthusiasm for innovation. We don’t know when these things are going to happen, but we know that they are likely to happen eventually.

One reason why so many change efforts have failed in recent years is that the movements were built in response to a moment. Once the moment comes, it’s too late. You build your movement to prepare for a trigger, so that once it comes you can make the most of it.

3. Design A Dilemma

I once had a six-month assignment to restructure the sales and marketing operations of a troubled media company, and the sales director was a real stumbling block. She never overtly objected, but would nod her head and then quietly sabotage progress. For example, she promised to hand over the clients she worked with directly to her staff, but never seemed to get around to it.

It was obvious that she intended to slow-walk everything until the six months were over and then return to the status quo. As a longtime senior employee, she had considerable political capital within the organization and, because she was never directly insubordinate, provoking a direct confrontation with her would have been risky and unwise.

So rather than create a conflict, I designed a dilemma. I arranged with the CEO of a media buying agency for one of the salespeople to meet with a senior buyer and take over the account. The sales director had two choices: she could either let the meeting go ahead and lose her grip on the department or try to derail it. She chose the latter and was fired for cause. Once she was gone, her mismanagement became obvious and sales shot up.

Dilemma actions have been around for at least a century. One early example was Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinels, who picketed the Wilson White House with his own quotes in 1917. More recently, the tactic has been the subject of increasing academic interest. These actions share design principles that can be replicated in almost any context.

Key to the success of a dilemma action is that it is seen as a constructive act rooted in a shared value. In the case of the Sales Director, she had agreed to give up her accounts and setting up the meeting was consistent with that agreement. That’s what created the dilemma. She had to choose between violating the shared value or giving up her resistance.

We Need To Take A More Evidence-Based Approach

The modern practice of change management is still deeply rooted in Kotter’s original 1995 Harvard Business Review article. Yet the only evidence he cites is his own observations. From his subsequent writing, these appear to be case studies based on executive interviews. There doesn’t appear to be any significant effort to control for his own biases, those of his subjects, or any other significant sources of error.

Now consider the prominent sociologist Doug McAdam’s paper on recruiting for Freedom Summer during the civil rights movement. He was able to analyze the applications of not only 720 volunteers, but also 239 others who withdrew and 55 who were rejected. He conducted 80 in-depth personal interviews and, because the applicants were asked to list their social contacts, McAdam was able to document the social ties among them.

That type of documentation simply doesn’t exist in Kotter’s work or the work of his imitators. To be fair, it is rare in business research as a whole. We seldom get access to internal data, much less insights from other stakeholders or anything akin to what researchers routinely gather in more rigorous fields, such as sociology, anthropology and psychology.

The ugly truth about change management is that the traditional change models simply don’t work. They aren’t based on any serious research and have shown themselves, over a period of decades, to fail consistently. Often, organizational change management units are used by consulting firms and vendors to cheerlead larger engagements.

That isn’t to say it’s some sort of con. In my experience, organizational change management practitioners are well-meaning and doing their best to make a positive impact. They are hired for engagements, make proposals, deliver on what they promised and leave their clients happy. They usually aren’t around to see what happens after the engagement ends.

Yet we do have a vast body evidence from other fields that we can apply. Strategies like starting with a majority, waiting for a trigger and designing dilemmas are rooted in that evidence. Transformation is too important to entrust to conventional wisdom when decades of research show us a better way.

Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, a lecturer at Wharton, an international keynote speaker, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, watch his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.

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