A year or two ago I was working with a senior executive team on a change initiative that would affect about 200 employees in the IT services department of a pharmaceutical company.  When we got to the portion of the strategy that dealt with how we'd communicate the changes to the team, I met resistance.

"Why do we have to have this 'kickoff' all-team meeting at the beginning and an intranet site for daily updates on the changes?" one of the executives said.  "I just don't understand why we have to waste all this time and money on explaining everything to the junior employees.  They don't understand the overall business, and they won't understand why we're making these changes.  If they want to keep their jobs, they'll just do what we're telling them!"

Unfortunately, this isn't an uncommon reaction.  Many senior execs seem to think that (a) junior and mid-level staffers are too dumb to understand 'the big picture' and (b) people who are collecting paycheques should simply do what they're told, and not suck up all kinds of resources by demanding explanations.

The truth is that emplyees often have a better grasp of the big picture than might at first be evident - it's hard to be a successful, long-term employee in any job without having at least some understanding of the organization as a whole.  What's more, the internet age means that the average employee has more access, to more information, about the organization for which s/he works than ever before.  Employees are more familiar with terms like 'shareholder value' and 'market capitalization' and 'competitive advantage' than they were even 25 years ago.  All of which means they're probably much better equipped to understand business decisions - even those made 'at the highest levels'.

What's more, study after study shows that the best employees - the most productive, valuable ones - are those who are actively engaged in their jobs and their organizations.  In other words, the best employees are definitely not the kind of people who want to just 'do what they're told' - they want to understand their role within the organization, how they're contributing to the organization's success, and that their efforts are making a difference.

If organizations want to keep these high-value employees through a change - and keep them productive - they must communicate the reasons for change, the rationale for decisions, the process of change, and how everything works together to achieve the goal.  Does it take time and money to do this?  Yes.  Will everyone on the team understand every detail?  Probably not.  Will it, in the end, help you retain your top performers and navigate the change successfully?  Absolutely.

Scarcely a day goes by that I don't read another article or blog about why a change management initiative has been a desperate failure, or went off the rails, or got hijacked and never lived up to its potential.  That's fine, as far as it goes - it's good to understand why things go wrong - but I've been involved with all kinds of highly successful change management initiatives and I'm here to tell you that, despite what you may read, failure is not inevitable.

In fact, I think it might be more helpful to ask ourselves why change efforts succeed:  What factors are required for change initiatives to achieve the results they set out to achieve?

In my 20+ yeas of change management experience, I've learned that the answers to "Why does change succeed?" are the following:

1.  Provide clear reasons for change

There's nothing more guaranteed to get employees to dig their heels in that to announce wholesale changes without explanation, reason or context. People don't like to be 'bossed' around or treated like children.  So take the time to explain why the change is taking place:  Maybe it's for competitive advantage, maybe it's because the marketplace has changed, maybe it's because the shareholders are getting restive.  As long as the reasons are rational and make basic sense, communicating them will make the change process go much more smoothly.

2.  Strive for engagement

Successful change doesn't happen when a small team of senior leaders drags the rest of the organization kicking and screaming into the new world.  Successful change requires everyone in the organization to be engaged in the process and the results.  By providing clear reasons for the change, you've already taken the first step to engaging your workforce; ensuring that they continue to be engaged throughout the process will turn your group into a team which is striving for the same goal.

3.  Make change make sense

Moving your head office 50 miles from one city to another take advantage of improved transportation, raw materials and tax breaks may make perfect sense in the boardroom when the decision is made.  But it won't make sense to the 2500 workers who are about to be displaced unless you can explain to them what this change will mean for the organization.  Does it mean you'll stand a better chance of surviving a difficult economic climate in the next few years? Does it mean you'll be able to reduce the prices for your product and therefore grow the company, with increased opportunity for everyone?  If you don't take the time to explain, all you'll end up with is a resentful workforce.

4.  Communicate!  

Ever notice how sports coaches are always talking to their players?  They talk to them before the game, during the game, after the game - they're constantly communicating instructions, feedback, motivation and strategy.  The same principle is true for change initiatives:  Change will be more successful when communication is continual and consistent.

5.  Stay positive

A few weeks ago, we talked about how a positive culture means a positive bottom line.  A positive environment - leaders who are enthusiastic about change, cultivating an attitude of resiliency and adaptability when it comes to change - will go a long way to ensuring that the team can stay focused on the change and not get sidetracked by resistance or delays to address trumped-up obstacles.

It's just possible that by focusing on the ways in which change succeeds - and spending a little less time on why it fails - the prospect of change may not seem quite so daunting.

A few weeks ago I took part in a workshop session with other change leaders and coaches.  It's always interesting to hear how other people approach organizational change - you never know when you might learn something new - but I found myself disagreeing wholeheartedly with one participant, also a change management consultant.

"I never spend time reviewing an organization's history," he said.  "That's just wasted time.  I'm here to help them move forward, not dwell on the past."

While I agree with the last part of his statement - as change management consultants, we're supposed to be helping companies move forward into a changed environment - I don't believe that it's productive to ignore an organization's history.  What organizations can achieve is dependent upon their people, and people are the sum of their experiences, their history - they can't just reinvent themselves at 9 am on an arbitrary Monday morning and pretend their past experiences never happened.

In fact, you wouldn't want them to.  Much of your employees' value lies in their past experiences, both at work and in their personal lives.  Their education, their life experiences, their relationships with their team members - all of these can be positive assets as you move forward with change.

At the same time, of course, an organization's history can sometimes be a hurdle:  An ingrained resistance to change, old feuds between key departments, a non-productive attachment to outmoded business processes - all of these things can become obstacles to successful, productive change.

Burying your head in the sand is hardly ever a successful strategy

But ignoring these obstacles won't remove them from the path to change - and in fact you may be missing some key insight that could help your change strategy be more successful with less effort.  Here's an example:  You create a chanjge plan and issue edicts to various departments of the organization.  The purchasing department and the marketing department have had difficulty working together in the past, but you've decided that It's A New Day for the organization and proceed with your plans, assuming everyone will pull together - you don't have time to go into that history with them.  Except that 3 days before the change is supposed to take effect, you discover that the purchasing department hasn't released the funds the marketing department needs in order to properly communicate the change, and now you have to delay your change efforts for a month while the mess gets sorted out.  The organization loses money every day the project is delayed - and even more important, the change effort loses momentum while everyone waits around.

Now, there's something to be said for leadership encouraging employees to come to a change strategy with an open mind, and to try not to bring 'baggage' into the process.  But to pretend that the history of an organization - and that of its individual employees - doesn't exist only ends up being counterproductive.

Sometimes it takes a physical change to spark a behavioral one

The countries of the former USSR are in a difficult period:  They know they need to hange, but are caught in the grip of hundreds of years of often-difficult history.  History is frequently a barrier to change, but a country isn't like an office:  You can't just buy some new office furniture, paint the walls and invite everyone in for a lunch'n'learn when you want to signal - and foster - a major change of direction.

But maybe you can do other things.

Recently, Georgia - the one in Asia, not the one in the US - unveiled its brand new parliament building in Kutaisi.  The new building has been described as a "sci-fi bubble" and represents a deliberate departure from Soviet-era architecture (a Soviet war memorial was, in fact, demolished to make way for the new building).

The whole point of the $83 million structure, uniquely modern in its landscape, is to be a tangible expression of Georgia's commitment to moving past its Soviet history and towards a more global, independent future.  Ramaz Nikolaishvilli, Georgia's Regional Development and Infrastructure Minister, said:  "We don't want our children's taste to be ruined by communist architecture.  We want beautiful buildings and we want the next generation to grow up with good taste.  This will help them live in a better and more dignified way."

Of course, the project hasn't been without its difficulties:  Demolishing the war memorial caused injuries; there have been cost and deadline overruns; and there are plenty of detractors who think the building is both ugly and a misuse of public funds in what should be a time of austerity.

Is the big risk going to pay off in big results for Georgia?  It's probably too soon to tell, but early signs suggest that bold moves like the new parliament buildings, combined with other efforts to remove Soviet-era reminders are helping Georgians to see themselves as independent, entrepreneurial, and ready to compete in a global economy - all of which will put it ahead of other former USSR countries in the long run.

Lessons for change management practitioners

It's tempting to think of 'change management' as something that happens in big companies, in 6-month cycles with tidy little project plans.  Georgia's new parliament buildings are a good reminder that sometimes 'change' is much, much bigger than implementing a new enterprise-wide CRM system.

At the same time, however, all business-related change management really involves many of the same things:

1. Driving better business results - whether within an organization, an industry, or even a continent
2. Knowing that sometimes you have to take big risks in order ot have a chance to achieve big rewards
3. Having a clear vision of what you're striving towards will help you weather the criticism
4. Remembing that visionary change involves more than just this year's fiscal reports - it's about making investments that will set you up for success in the long term
5. Sometimes changing one thing changes everything else.  You may not be able to change everything (or at least not as quickly as you'd like to), but taking the first big steps at least gets you moving.