The question, “why is change so hard” is a difficult but important one to answer.  The change management industry wrestles with developing a concise model because the question of “why” grows in complexity as we try and apply it to ways people react to change.

Renowned academic, author and speaker Dr. John Kotter summarizes successful change in 8 basic steps.  His model is a great starting point for developing organizational change strategy for organizations.  Here is a quick summary to keep in mind as you develop your organizational change strategy:

One of the first action steps in implementing change is to create a sense of urgency.  Employees need to be energized by a feeling that change is needed—now!  This is what creates the energy that empowers people to make a change and embrace the change as it is implemented.

Organizational change management (OCM) principles have their roots in research done as far back as the early 1950s when psychologist Kurt Lewin developed his three-stage model for planned change.

Understanding the culture around us

The way people interact within your company – expectations, norms and taboos are a result of years of interactions between people, management styles and organizational structure.  Changing the status quo of an established corporate culture is not an easy task.

The physical distance you keep between yourself and others during social situations is your personal space.  In normal conversations we don’t give our personal space much thought; it’s a natural distance that we grant between ourselves and others based on our culture, gender and personality.  However, when you enter into a cross cultural conversation, you may want to keep your personal distance in mind.

In American culture we value the clock.  We punch the clock to mark the time we are and are not working.  While on the job, we generally dedicate one block of time to one specific task.  Meetings are scheduled precisely with expectations that everyone will attend at the appointed time.  We see projects and tasks on a timeline.  We are a monochronic society.

Negotiating across cultures is a at best a challenge, and at worst, a nightmare.  Even if you are in a homogeneous culture, the negotiation process is full of communication pitfalls.  Hand gestures, posture and tone of voice all impact the way your message is received.   

As the role of a company in the market changes, so does the corporate culture.

So much of what makes a company successful lies in the culture within it.  This is why when a change is made, even if the change is from an external force; we need to closely manage how the change impacts employees.

Over 30 years ago, Dr. Virginia Satir brought us a model for change that simply yet elegantly summarized the way a change impacts the performance of an organization. 

As pictured here, the Satir change model shows how immediately after a change is introduced into an organization, the change is met with resistance.  The conflict that is a normal part of resistance throws the organization into chaos.  The group eventually integrates the change ultimately creating a new (and hopefully more productive) status quo.