O’Regan was presenting a session on turning organisational change into an opportunity for business growth to attendees at the BT Partner Plus event in Birmingham in February.
She said that 80 per cent of transformational changes fail because a company’s main agenda isn't realised.
Broken down, according to research by Stuart Black, Associate Professor at the University of Reading, there are three stages where these projects fail: 35 per cent at ignition; 50 per cent at lift off; and 15 per cent at escape velocity.
Six steps for transformational change
To overcome this, O’Regan said that businesses driving change needed to take into account six key factors:
- Logic matters when you are trying to get people to follow you on a journey, but emotion matters more.
- By creating perception and experiences for people that include the senses, you can get them to follow you more easily.
- Without pathways that show you how you go from where you currently are to where you need to get to, it’s impossible for people to change - they will retrench back.
- As a leader, if you can design your communications in a way that both indicates the way forward but without people being in conflict with prior positions they have held or work they have done previously, you will be more successful.
- Champions are vital to the success of the transformation.
- Reward progress and the efforts that is being made and the wins will come.
O’Regan said that getting someone to come onboard with the change, commit to and follow it is difficult. Using an approach based on facts and figures alone, she said, won't work on its own – rather, you need to appeal to people’s emotions.
“You need to get people to feel exactly what you feel about the change to carry them through that journey,” said O'Regan. “You will know the emotion that's most relevant to that particular individual you are trying to influence, but it does also require you to pause and check in with yourself and determine what you are trying to do and then express that in human emotions.”
Secondly, O’Regan said that you need to create an experience using the senses that makes it impossible for people to ignore the need for change. That requires using all the relevant senses, she said.
To bring about the change, O’Regan said that you need to put in place a pathway or bridge that takes people from their current way of working to how you want them to work in the future. That means giving them the right level of specificity and clarity they require to effect the change, she said.
Engaging with your people
Added to that, O’Regan said that you need to design communications and a way of engaging with people that enables them to move forward without creating conflict for them in terms of a prior position they have held. Thus, you need to deeply acknowledge where they have come from and the journey they have been on and to explain what is changing on the outside and what that means on the inside.
O’Regan said that a big problem with the latter stages of working on transformational change projects, people can get tired and a bit lost, or even both. That can prevent businesses from getting far enough with embedding it within themselves, she said.
“You have to bear in mind that the people doing all the work in the transformation space are also having to perform their day-to-day activities, and that can be extremely tiring for both you and them,” said O’Regan. “Specifically, when you are trying to achieve change, it’s the upward trajectory of the learning curve that is often the most difficult part and where it gets the most tiring.”
To tackle the problem, O’Regan said that you need to have a champion who sits side-by-side with the individual who has been tasked with bringing about the change to guide them. By working in close contact with them, they can pick up on the smallest micro-behaviours and advise them on the best course of action required to achieve the change and what to avoid doing, she said.
Finally, O’Regan said that progress must be rewarded. That requires the leadership team getting in the habit of celebrating successes and significant milestones through the likes of face-to-face meetings and team awards to recognise individuals in an authentic manner.
“When thinking about successful transformational change, I always reflect on Charles Darwin's famous saying: it isn't always the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent,” said O’Regan. “It's the ones most reactive to change.”