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May 2007
The Thud of Change
By: Dutch Holland,
PhD
A thud is the sickening sound of failure, an
indication that something has gone wrong. When you are flying in
an airliner, you really don’t want to hear a thud, particularly
a loud one.
As practitioners of change engineering, we have
had the occasion to hear a thud as well, an indication that
something is about to go wrong. Of course we have trained ears …
and what sounds like a thud to us doesn’t always sound that way
to others in the organization trying to change. Here are three
recently-experienced thuds that signal a change maneuver in
trouble:
1.
The Delegation Thud
When critical
change actions are innocently “delegated to organizational
subordinates” who have neither the skills, the wheel base (i.e.,
power or authority), or the
time and interest to make those change actions happen crisply.
Consequence:
A crazy
mixed message is sent to the organization that signals a huge
drop in priority and/or executive interest in the change. We have seen
change in a billion dollar enterprise come to a halt because a
key action was delegated four levels down into the organization!
2. The “On-hold” Thud
When a critical
change initiative is “put on hold” while organization members
re-think why they are doing this change and what’s really in it
for them.
Consequence:
Delayed or on-hold projects almost always lose hard-fought
ground and valuable momentum. We have seen millions of dollars
lost forever while “re-thinking goes on.”
3. Non-performer Thud
When a
non-performer is not able to do his share of change work and
management decides to “just let it play out” rather than moving
to exchange players (lest that non-performer have reputation
damage.)
Consequence:
Change becomes off course and tarnished. We have seen billion dollar
business consequences, so that one colleague’s reputation would
not be
impacted.
So what do you do about thuds?
First, thud maintenance: plan ahead to avoid as
many thuds as possible.
Second, thud repair: if you hear a thud, quickly
diagnose, confront, predict consequences, and fix it! … or the
next thud may be the one the door makes upon your departure!
 To find out more about our implementing change approach, call Dutch Holland at 713.800.3663. Holland & Davis can give you success story after success story ...and suggest ways that you can engineer change.
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