A significant portion of transformation initiatives fail. But for this common outcome, why do we not have a defined or more considered approach to failure? Join Oliver Banks and explore the intentional actions that you must take when your transformation initiative crashes. From damage limitation through to the four types of lessons to learn, step through the aspects that you need to face into.
Listen to this episode to discover:
- A framework of elements to guide you through the process of transformation failure.
- How to ensure lessons learned are not forgotten.
- And the metaphor to help understand the considerations you’ll need to factor in.
Of course, it’s always better to take preventative action to maintain control of a transformation’s destiny. So if you’ve not already listened to episode 307: Avoiding Transformation Failure, then this can be a great way to avoid being surprised by an initiative’s downfall.
Crucial factors to embrace when failure happens
Keep these points in mind to navigate through a challenging transformation failure effectively
Damage Limitation: The first priority after recognizing a transformation failure is to limit the damage by ensuring safety and then stabilising the situation. This could involve addressing health and safety hazards, financial issues, and reputational risks to prevent the situation from worsening.
Understanding the Issue: It’s crucial to identify the type of failure and root cause to determine the next steps. This understanding helps in deciding what happens next with the transformation.
Deciding What Happens Next: Based on the understanding of the issue, decisions need to be made about whether to repair, pause, or cancel the transformation. This might involve reversing changes or making it clear that the transformation is a failure to avoid wasting resources on a “zombie” transformation.
Communication: Effective communication is essential throughout the entire process to ensure clarity and alignment. This includes short-term emergency communications and longer-term updates to all stakeholders, including possibly the press.
Residual Value: Even in failure, there may be parts of the transformation that hold value and can be repurposed. Identifying and extracting these elements can still provide benefits to the organisation.
Managing Mindset and Priorities: It’s important to manage the priorities and mindset of the team involved. This may require reassessing roles and responsibilities and ensuring that morale and resilience are maintained despite the failure.
Lessons and Learnings: Conducting lessons learned sessions helps to identify what went wrong and how to avoid similar issues in the future. These learnings should be documented and revisited to ensure they are not forgotten.
Resilience and Morale: Maintaining the morale and resilience of the team and stakeholders is crucial as transformation failures can lead to negative emotions and behaviours. Rebuilding relationships and ensuring a positive outlook for future projects is important for long-term success.
Additional episodes of the podcast to check out next
As mentioned, you may want to check out episode 307: Avoiding Transformation Failure which reveals more about the different types of transformation and how to avoid unintended failures.
Many transformations end in failure and never deliver their intended benefits. With hindsight, this may lead to a series of incorrect or misled investment and prioritisation decisions. In episode 287: Why The Change Is Not Realising The Benefits, we’ll explore the reasons behind this and how to ensure that your transformation sets and meets the appropriate expectations.
And finally, transformations inevitably meet challenges and problems along the way. Join Oliver for episode 294: The Inevitable Transformation Challenges and discover how you can safely navigate your change journey.
