CIO’s Digital Agenda XII: How to Overcome Change Inertia

Change is an ongoing business capability.


Change is inevitable, and organizational change becomes a common practice within an organization, but more than two-thirds of change effort fails to achieve the expected results. What’re the barriers to cause the change failures, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy, and manage change lifecycle effectively?

How to Overcome Change Inertia

• The Symptoms of Ineffective Team or Organization. Change is never for its own sake. The true reason behind the change is either due to the ineffectiveness of teams/organizations or the inefficiency of processes or practices. There are many common success factors in effective team or organization; perhaps every failure has its own causes but generally speaking, what are the symptoms of dysfunctional management?

• Change, or Resistance to Change, What’s the Problem? Change is only constant, but most of the change management effort fail. Indeed, change is difficult, some say, change is not a problem, the primary reason for change failure is resistance to change while the second reason is the inability of leaders to deal with resistance. What are the true problems of the change, or what’re the real roadblocks to step into changes?

• A Resistance Mind: How to Crack it and Manage Change Successfully: Change is the only constant, even change itself has been accelerated, however, more than 70% of corporate change management effort fails to achieve the expected result. Digital means flow, perhaps the root cause of change failure is due to such a static mindset, resistant to change, but what is the cause of such a resistance mind and how to crack it and manage change successfully.

• What Factors keep Business from Championing transformational change? Organizations large or small are faced with more radical digital or management transformation now, however, change management (the overarching term includes both transformation and change) has very high failure rate overall, what factors keep business from championing transformational changes, or what are key success factors in driving transformation?

• How to Get Ahead of the Change Curve: The change curve is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through because going through the downs of the change curve has a negative impact on productivity, leadership is required to guide people through the different phases in order to flatten the curve and to minimize the impact on productivity.

• Embedding Creativity in Change Management: Too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. The perspective is often rational, an automatic cultural response; defending already existing structures, all that we take for granted, without questioning the underlying premises. So in order to make change both proactive and sustainable, shall you or how to embed creative mechanism in change management.

• Have You Focused on Fixing the Wrong Cause of a Problem? As human species, we are still facing many problems and challenges. Either for individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the problem-solving capability is crucial to surviving and thriving. However, many decision-makers fail to fully grasp and accurately perceive what leads to problems and difficulties. Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken, but that is too early. After observing events and patterns, there are the underlying structures, the mechanisms, that cause the problem. And people lack critical thinking are usually never question because "it's the way things should be." Problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate, so what happens when you focus on fixing the wrong cause of problems?

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Posted in: Change Management,IT Transformation,Sum UP