GALT Consulting LLC

3 out of 4 change efforts fail.  Ouch!  Think about that for a minute.  That means that every time you decide to make a real improvement in your organization or decide to launch a new product or attempt to improve the performance of a team or employee, you are more likely to fail than succeed.  Why is that?

It is helpful to know a little about how the human mind processes information.  The world is very complex.  If we tried to wrap our minds around all of things going on around us, we wouldn't be able to function.  Just sitting her at my desk typing this blog article requires an amazing amount of technology, biology, knowledge and practice.  Thinking about all of this while writing the article would make me less than productive!

Therefore, our minds do something remarkable to help us cope with the noise of day to day life.  It simplifies things into packets of information that we can understand.  The skills I need to have in order to type this article at a reasonable rate have become almost subconscious.  My fingers move faster than I can consciously make them move.  The words flow from inside my head calling upon my knowledge and experience without a second glance or particular attention to the specific source of the information.  It is a good thing that our brains work this way.

The challenge occurs when we realize that different brains sum up information in a different way.  I have no trouble turning on my computer in the morning, accessing the internet, opening up my blog editor, and then typing an article.  To someone else, this may appear to be a monumental task.  There are many people who don't know what a blog even is, much less how to create, edit, and maintain one.  Our brains are shaped by our experiences.

Within a team attempting to drive change within an organization, there are multiple collections of experiences.  Team members have very different perceptions on how the world works, especially people whose day to day lives are very different from each other (ex: like executive management and an hourly laborer).  Teams use language to create a vision for the desired change.  For example, a team may assemble to find ways to "improve the organization".  The challenge arrives, and this is the reason change efforts often fail, is that the language used means different things to different people.

"Improve the organization" to an executive might mean improving the balance sheet or creating organic growth.  "Improve the organization" to a laborer might mean improved working conditions and more benefits.  The point here is simple, common, and very often ignored: in order to win at a game, the team must first make sure it is playing the same game. 

Overcoming these perspectives requires some work.  First of all, the major perspectives must be represented within the team.  Second, the perspectives must be discussed openly.  Finally, the team must create a new language to define its purpose.  This new language uses old words in a way that invokes the discussions of the team.  This language becomes known as change or transformational language.  Examples of powerful transformational language includes "We the People" and "I Have a Dream Today". 

If you have some change to make in your organization, make sure you get all the players at the table and then make sure you playing the same game.  Use a whiteboard to collect the team's thoughts to make sure you are finding a common perspective.  Then utilize language to define that common perspective for the team.  Change efforts don't have to fail!