Change Management: 10 Classic Myths
you should dispel

Change Projects regularly fail in Practice

In today’s business world, there is only one real constant - change. In order to continue to be successful, companies also need a high degree of changeability. They must constantly adapt to new circumstances. The requirements of customers are also constantly changing. For example, they are placing ever higher demands on the efficiency and speed of processes, the availability of products and the transparency of information.

In order to meet these demands, it is necessary to stay up to date in the field of digital technologies: if you are planning a cross-divisional digitalization project in the near future, you will certainly have already considered how best to approach your change management.

But beware: there are still some myths surrounding the topic. False assumptions and an inappropriate mindset contribute to the fact that in practice, unfortunately, change projects regularly fail. If you want your project to be successful, you should definitely clear up a few classics - preferably before the start of your change project or even better: right now.

10 Classic Myths of Change Management - and how you can do better

1. Change is easy and happens on the Side

   Very clear answer: no, not at all. First of all, change means that those involved have to leave their comfort zone. And that’s never easy, is it? That’s because people love habits and always find it difficult at first to change behaviors they have already learned. A simple example: you ask some employees to change their usual workplaces in the office from one day to the next. Sounds trivial, but it is certainly a small challenge for some employees at first.

   In a change project, your employees also have to swap their familiar, well-established work processes for the “new unknown”. When something is unfamiliar, it also triggers anxiety in many people, as they can neither assess the new situation nor control it themselves. Until the future state in the company - which is what the change project is supposed to achieve - has been established, it is a strenuous process for the individual participants, the teams and the organization itself. Anyone who claims that a change can simply take place in the background alongside day-to-day business without much effort has most likely never experienced such a process. Or they are closing their eyes to reality.

   

   Plug and Play: Why this does
   not apply to the
   Digital Transformation

2. A good Plan is all you need

   Of course, a good, carefully prepared plan is an important success factor for a change project. It provides the necessary overview and creates a feeling of security - so you can’t do without it under any circumstances. However, with the best will in the world, you cannot plan the whole thing down to the smallest detail and then implement it in exactly the same structured way. This may work very well for the company’s tenth anniversary celebration, for which there is a clear schedule with fixed program points that you can stick to.

   However, a change process is not linear and some difficulties only become apparent during the course of the process and require you to continually adapt the procedure dynamically to the new actual situation. This is completely normal! Typically, a distinction is made between seven different phases of change.

   

3. The Main Thing is to use the right Technology

   Your digital transformation project is of course all about the new technology… isn’t it? That’s only true at first glance! The attitude that the success of your change project is determined solely by functioning new software can quickly become an obstacle. This is because you may underestimate the human aspect. In the end, it is the end users who have to adapt to new structures, processes and ways of thinking. For example, if the company upgrades to a new software version, they may first have to get used to a new user interface and different navigation.

4. The Customers have nothing to do with it

   How are your customers actually feeling about your change process? What concerns do they have? What specific concerns do they express to you? To what extent are they affected by the changes in your company or even have to make procedural changes themselves?

   Many companies do not address these questions sufficiently or do so far too late. But in most cases, the change is also intended to improve customer collaboration. So why shouldn’t you take them into account in your plans?

5. Change is a One-off Event

   A change project has a fixed date on which it starts and also one on which it ends? No, that’s another misconception, because this is in no way a finished process like the company party, which is over after the last item on the agenda and where everyone goes home after cleaning up. And where you then have to wait for the next occasion to celebrate. Change, on the other hand, is permanent in companies these days. Otherwise you would not be able to react to the constantly changing market conditions. And if it turns out that the newly established structures and processes of your change project are not working as expected, you may need to make adjustments.

6. Managers remain in the Background

   The management level should definitely be involved in the change process. After all, they are most familiar with the overarching corporate strategy to which the change project is oriented. In this way, managers can set the direction of the change process. It is also important for the motivation of employees to see that managers contribute more to the change than just making grand speeches with meaningless phrases. In order to accompany employees through the process and provide them with optimal support, managers should fulfill various roles - among other things, they become ambassadors and mediators.

7. Only Big Steps lead to the Goal

   Managers in change projects are often under pressure to achieve as much as possible as quickly as possible. This sometimes gives them the feeling that they have to implement all the changes in one fell swoop. This is the wrong approach: small Steps are better suited to establishing a major change in the company than a Big Bang project approach. Why is that? Quite simply, the big project goal usually seems a long way off for many employees: “It’s going to take an eternity to get there! Is that even possible?”

   Small milestones, on the other hand, seem more feasible and are easy to achieve. This also makes successes much faster to see, which in turn motivates employees to want to achieve future milestones as well. Everything step by step! If you celebrate the milestones you have successfully completed so far within the company, this provides extra motivation.

8. Emotions don’t play a Role

   If you really want to win over your employees for the upcoming change project, it is not enough to present them with pure facts and a bunch of figures and thus only purely rational reasons for the change. No, your task is to arouse emotions in them - and the right emotions at that! It would definitely be wrong to scare employees by describing possible horror scenarios of what could go wrong with the project. That would be counterproductive, because employees would then instinctively build up resistance to the change. Fear leads people to cling to old patterns of behavior - and that is precisely what you want to prevent with your project.

   

   With the right emotions, however, employees will develop the necessary energy and ideally even enthusiasm for the upcoming change. You must therefore manage to inspire them and make them aware of the individual and tangible benefits. To do this, employees must understand the high importance of the project, but in a positive framework with a level of effort that they feel able to cope with. It’s a highly difficult hike, but if you can manage it, encourage your employees to proactively get involved and drive the change forward themselves.

9. Isolated Resistance doesn’t matter

   In the course of the project, you realize that the majority of your employees are rather positive about the change. Very good! However, you also gradually notice that some small groups are forming who would obviously prefer to hold on to the status quo and form a kind of “resistance coalition”. What do you do when you notice such a development? Ignore it in the hope that the whole thing will sort itself out and the employees will automatically change their minds at some point? After all, we are only talking about a few people. Under no circumstances should you underestimate this! You also need to take the concerns of smaller groups into account in order to ensure the success of the overall project, because what would happen if these employees suddenly failed to complete their project tasks or did so only half-heartedly? Or if they “infect” other employees who were previously convinced of the change with their negative attitude?

10. “No News is Good News”

    Have you heard the saying “No News is Good News”? In the context of change management, this phrase should remind you to keep your employees constantly informed about the progress of the project. After all, if they don’t hear anything new for too long, this often leads to uncertainty and possibly also anxiety among employees, because at some point they will make up their own truth in their heads instead of assuming that everything is simply going well. Be as honest as possible with the people involved, even if you have to deliver some “bad news” from time to time. This is also part of the process.

Good Change Management is a Challenge - but not Rocket Science

Change is a dynamic process - and so is managing and implementing it. Nevertheless, it is not witchcraft. You could rather say: change management is a complex task that challenges you in many areas and for which you have to find the right resources.
It is particularly important to deal comprehensively with the human side and not to focus exclusively on the technologies. Also consider the different phases of the process that your employees go through.

What you should also bear in mind for your change project:

• Choose an appropriate project name to win the favor of your employees.
• Make sure you have a professional kick-off meeting at the start of the project.

If you take all this into account, the only thing left to say at the end is: “No guts no glory.” Because every major change requires courage.