Why does change take so long?

Organizational change has two main stages: 1) Building the momentum and 2) Making the change sustainable. You can have day-long debates which one is more important or more difficult: The answer is both. Can’t have one without the other. But when the frustration is with the speed of change, the problem usually lies with the first stage. The organization is failing to build momentum.

John Kotter has a beautiful 8-step change framework:

1. Create a sense of urgency
2. Build a guiding team
3. Create the change vision and strategy
4. Communicate to build understanding and buy-in
5. Empower people to act
6. Create short term wins
7. Don’t let up
8. Make it stick

The first six deal with building momentum. In a nutshell, you have to have a crystal clear vision of what you want to achieve with your change and then describe it vividly to everyone involved until there is no one left who has doubts. You have to make it concrete, practical and easy.  If there is a concern, ambiguity or concern, your job is to remove it or mitigate it. You will replace doubt with hope, and eventually hope with conviction and excitement.

Change is slow, when you don’t have a critical mass of people trying the new thing. Driving change is very much like marketing. You create awareness by communication. You penetrate the consciousness by using as many channels as possible. You create interest by influencing opinion leaders. You persuade people to try it the first time and ensure that the first experience is positive. You make it easy, so they do it again. You want to make it a habit. You facilitate positive word-of-mouth feedback. You want them to tell their friends that it was OK.

Change is slow if nobody knows about it. It’s slow if it’s hard to try the new way of doing things, or if the old way is easier. Change will be slow, if everyone around you is sticking to old habits.

Sometimes change can be utterly contagious: Just watch this youtube by Derek Sivers.

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