Six barriers you must overcome to achieve your transformation goals
It takes extraordinary courage, determination, and faith to pursue a bold change initiative, stay the course and see it through.
No one in their right mind would dare to climb Mount Everest without preparation. Similarly, you shouldn’t embark on a bold transformation journey without adequate preparation either.
In a bold transformation process, there are always unpredictable events, circumstances, and challenges that cannot be anticipated or prepared for in advance. These unanticipated events often lead to the most significant changes and breakthroughs.
At the same time, however, some challenges always arise in one way or another. If you do not anticipate, expect, and prepare for them, they could easily become barriers that impede your ability to stay on course in transforming your organization to the next level. Here are six barriers that often disrupt and derail change initiatives:
Barrier 1: Not tolerating a temporary dip in performance and/or results:
When creating a new future, leaders enroll their leaders and managers to think beyond existing paradigms, solve problems differently and pursue opportunities in new ways. People are often genuinely excited to think from the future rather than continuing to approach work from the same past-based mindset and approaches.
For most leaders, “Think outside the box”, “Challenge the status quo”, and “Put yourself at the bottom of a new scale” are hollow slogans that they pay lip service to. But to leaders who are committed to change these are marching orders. However, as people pursue and practice these new marching orders things often get worse before they get better.
Unfortunately, most leaders can’t tolerate even the slightest temporary dip in performance. They get overly nervous at the first sign of a dip, and many leaders react negatively, setting the team back and sending a message that they don’t have the courage and faith to stay the course.
If you can’t tolerate this dynamic, you will keep returning to the status quo instead of pushing forward to overcome this barrier. The good news is that when leaders stay the course and reach the other side of this barrier, things always get better again. In fact, they often get even better than they were before.
Barrier 2: Not making the focus on generating the new future a high enough priority:
At the outset of change initiatives, pretty much all leaders declare to their leaders and managers that creating a new future for the company that takes the game to the next level is “mission critical.” Unfortunately, in most cases, it doesn’t take long before most leaders get spooked by the uncertainty of the transition from the old to the new and start paying lip service to their own declaration.
They set unrealistic expectations that challenge people’s ability to balance existing and new priorities, avoid making tough decisions about realigning cross-functional support for the new, and under-resource future work. These mixed messages make it clear to people that the new future is merely a “nice to have.”
The remedy is simple: Don’t get distracted by the temporary confusion, uncertainty, doubts and rollercoaster of emotions that people experience in the change journey. Stay the course; stay true to your declaration and commitment, do what you said, and keep creating ways to promote and enable the new work. The quicker the new work sets roots and becomes the new norm, the higher the chances for transformational success.
Barrier 3: Buying into people’s complaints that they are too busy:
When moving from vision to execution in a large-scale transformation, the first few months are always the toughest. People are expected to juggle both their existing day job and spend time driving the new initiatives and tasks that will propel the organization toward its new future.
You can hire additional people to support the new initiatives if you have the means. However, many companies simply cannot afford to do that. So, the same people have to do both, and for a period of time, people will feel stretched and overwhelmed. It’s inevitable.
The first phase of execution will test your leadership resolve. On one hand, you can’t ignore people’s hardships and complaints. In fact, you need to think outside the box, be innovative and look for ways to do things differently. You also need to motivate and incentivize people in this transition. This will send the right message to your team.
At the same time, though, you also can’t buy into people’s complaints. You can’t compromise on the key principles and expectations of the change. People will see that you don’t have the resolve and courage. The consequence will be detrimental to your success.
Barrier 4: Expecting results and progress rather than relentlessly driving them:
The operative word here is “expecting”. During change initiatives, I often hear leaders say things like “We should be further along,” “the initiatives are not achieving big enough results,” and “we don’t see a change in behavior yet.”
If you mapped out the trend of a change initiative, more often than not it would look like a horizontal hockey stick. That is the nature of the beast. At first, you invest a lot of effort and energy without seeing a lot of return and at some point, things begin to take off.
Expecting progress, change, and results is the wrong approach. You have to drive it! Just like you wouldn’t dig out a flower seed every week after you planted it to see if it’s making progress, you can’t second-guess yourself, your direction or your team.
In fact, if you want to succeed in your change initiative, you have to manage your expectations and have the mindset that your job is not to “see if it works” but rather to “ensure and prove that it works”.
Barrier 5: Getting discouraged after the first wave of enthusiasm and excitement wears off:
A change initiative is like a marriage. After a while, the honeymoon will be over, and you will have to keep regenerating and refueling people’s energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to the cause. You have to keep enrolling your people in why the change is important, what the new future will look like and what possibilities and improvements it holds for the company and for them.
You also have to understand that at different phases of the initiative, people will be energized and engaged by different things.
In Phase One, the excitement comes from people envisioning, imagining, hoping, and believing in the new future state, which will benefit the company and them.
Phase Two is the toughest and most critical phase of a change initiative. In fact, this is the phase in which most companies fail. This is the stage when people work the hardest without easily seeing the progress and return of their efforts. In this phase, it is critical for leaders to keep focusing on, promoting, highlighting and recognizing any/all progress, wins and improvements, even small ones. That helps people to continue to be optimistic and hopeful about the change.
Phase Three is when the change has taken hold and noticeable improvements and wins are abundant. Motivating people in this phase is easier as they can easily see the changes and improvements and feel accomplished by being a part of the journey.
Understanding how a change initiative will unfold equips you to overcome this barrier.
Barrier 6: Blaming others and circumstances for what isn’t working, rather than taking ownership and responsibility:
Leaders who don’t stay the course tend to justify their failure with external circumstantial excuses and blame. I often hear them explain their failure with excuses such as: “There was too much going on“, “It wasn’t the right time“, “The market was too challenging” and “People were not on board“.
In contrast, leaders who stay the course seem not to care about blame or fault. They only care about how to make sure the promise of the new future will stay alive and be realized.
When things go well, they become nervous and shake people up in order to avoid complacency or arrogance. When things don’t go well, they rally and engage their teams in root cause analysis to figure out what they can change, correct and do better or differently.
You wouldn’t show up on the day of a marathon race without having prepared and trained, expecting to run. It is exactly the same with any significant change initiative!
The more you educate and prepare yourself, the more you can anticipate, expect and be ready for overcoming the inevitable barriers. If you don’t prepare, these obstacles will catch you by surprise and overwhelm you.
As the boxer Mike Tyson put it:
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth!”
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