\n\tIn today\u2019s globally connected and digitally mediated business ecosystem\u2014where the rate of change is accelerating and the degree of complexity is compounding\u2014organizations are fighting for their lives as they struggle to navigate the widening polarities of efficiently running their business and effectively changing it.<\/p>\n
\n\tSince 2000, just over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list have disappeared. And some 75 percent of today\u2019s S&P 500 companies are expected to be replaced within 10 years. Today, organizations are perishing at increasingly alarming rates because they can\u2019t keep up with the intensifying levels of change and complexity within the business ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe existential threat facing organizations is clear: They must change or they will die. But changing organizations is not easy. Robin Speculand reports that organizational transformation failure rates over the last 15 years range from 60 to 90 percent.<\/p>\n
\n\tPUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tOrganizations cannot change unless their people change. Most transformation efforts fail because organizations tend to over-emphasize the tangible change levers of structure, process, and governance while largely ignoring the emotional needs of the human beings who ultimately bear the burden of change. BCG reports that employees who have a complicated structural, procedural, and\/or governance change imposed upon them are three times more likely to be disengaged than those who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \n\tOrganizational change works when you identify the key beliefs and behaviors you must change in your organization and then create new structures, processes, and governance mechanisms to support them\u2014not the other way around.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen it comes to change, most organizations erroneously put the tangible \u201ccart\u201d before the emotional \u201chorse.\u201d As organizations grow and mature, they follow a predictable trajectory. First, they see and seize upon an emerging market opportunity or discontinuity. Next, they build a set of core capabilities to secure their position of competitive advantage, grow market share, and maximize profitability. Over time, these efficiency-oriented core capabilities calcify into a set of core rigidities that impede the organization from recognizing and responding to new market opportunities or discontinuity threats. Ultimately, these core rigidities become embedded in the organization\u2019s culture in the form of crippling orthodoxies that culminate in the demise of the enterprise.<\/p>\n \n\tOpportunity begets capability. Capability begets rigidity. Rigidity begets orthodoxy. Orthodoxy begets mortality. This trajectory highlights the huge cultural barrier leaders must overcome to increase their organization\u2019s \u201cresponse-ability\u201d to change.<\/p>\n \n\tIT ALL COMES DOWN TO CULTURE<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tA recent Economist Intelligence Unit study commissioned by the Brightline Initiative identified \u201ccultural attitudes\u201d as the primary barrier to successful strategy implementation. When it comes to driving successful organizational transformation, Peter Drucker\u2019s assertion that \u201cculture eats strategy for breakfast\u201d continues to endure.<\/p>\n \n\tEdgar Schein describes culture as: \u201cThe sum total of all the shared, taken-for-granted assumptions a group has learned throughout its history.\u201d <\/em>He further asserts that culture cannot be separated from strategy, because strategic thinking is deeply colored by these tacit assumptions. Culture, therefore, not only impedes the delivery of a strategy designed to change the business, it also influences the design of the strategy in a limiting way. While culture itself is notoriously hard to change, it cannot be left to chance.<\/p>\n \n\tChanging a business is deeply rooted in carefully evolving its culture to foster changed beliefs and behavior. To overcome the cultural orthodoxy that is suffocating organizational \u201cresponse-ability\u201d today, leaders must focus on the people side of change.<\/p>\n \n\tSuccessful organizational transformation requires an empathic, people-centered approach to change that nurtures a culture of aspiration, alignment, autonomy, and accountability by putting the \u201cemotional\u201d horse back in front of the \u201ctangible\u201d cart.<\/p>\n \n\tThis article is based on research supported by the\u00a0Brightline Initiative. It\u00a0gives the views of its author, not the position of the institutions represented.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tTony O\u2019Driscoll is a professor at Duke University\u2019s Fuqua School of Business and a research fellow at Duke Corporate Education. He studies how organizations build the leadership system capabilities required to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex world.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \n\tSuccessful organizational transformation requires an empathic, people-centered approach to change that nurtures a culture of aspiration, alignment, autonomy, and accountability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[41],"class_list":{"0":"post-11465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-magazine","7":"tag-training-matters","8":"magazine_issues-november-2019"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n