Heads & Tails of Island(s) of efficiency

70% of change initiatives fail, irrespective of their size. While this is true, many of the change initiatives are classified as failure not because it hasn’t delivered but because it hasn’t delivered a sustainable change. Generally, a transformation activity or change initiative (be it a small or big) sets out to change a sub-set of the organisation i.e. one or two divisions/functions within an organisation. As a result, an imbalance is introduced within the organisation, which is what I call as “Islands of efficiency” 

How does it get created?

For simplicity sake, let us consider that all things are equal before the introduction of a change. As a result of completion of transformation or change initiative, one part of the organisation starts to function better.  Whilst this is not bad, it creates an imbalance within the organisation. These imbalances aka “Island of efficiency” cannot be avoided because as the saying goes “World cannot be changed in a day” and the same applies to an organisation.  However, if the island of efficiency is not carefully nurtured, it can quickly disband to act as an opposing force to the introduced change and more dangerously, builds a culture of resistance for future change initiatives as well.

So what happens once Islands of efficiency are introduced?

As with everything in life, these islands of efficiency will create traits of thrills and spills. And these traits are inseparable because they are essentially similar to two sides of the coin – head and tails. Importantly, this means that the adoption and resistance to change is as likely to come from inside a change initiative as from outside!

What does the head side give? Essentially, three things

1. Create a Movement
                                    By starting small and wonderful, an organisation will be able to digest changes as it will be in byte-size chunks as opposed to dropping change in one big shot, which is often intimidating & scary. This helps build momentum and creates a right environment for the employees and leaders within the organisation to increase the momentum and thereby introduce further efficiencies.

2. Improve visibility
                                    By optimising one part of the organisation and improving how things are done within the organisation, it elevates the view of best practice to everyone – especially middle to senior management. At the same time, it also starts to uncover inefficient areas with proper insights to drive further improvement.
3. Approach to Improvement
                                    In this blog, I have made an inherent assumption that the approach taken to introduce the islands of efficiency is clean & credible and not quick & dirty. So a credible approach not only drives increased level of adoption but also provides a platform and mechanism for two things a) A template on how to improve things b) A template for how to work as change agents before, during and post the introduction of change. 

What does the Tail side entail?

Everything is not hunky-dory when you start & deliver something small. There are things that can cause negative impacts.
1. Slow bleed to death
                                    Changes generally will not have a sudden death; it will always be painful & slow. Why does it happen that way? The answer is simple – it’s called the law of equilibrium. Let me explain. Once an improved part of the organisation starts to interact with other part (read inefficient) of the organisation, there are only two outcomes:

a.       Efficient side of the organisation influences more  change to remove inefficiency

b.      Inefficient side of the organisation grinds away the efficiency to restore balance

The former is a direct characteristic of “Head” side in action and while the latter means, we are seeing “tail” side in action which means slow bleed towards the old status-quo!
2. Too much focus on the Island of efficiency
                                    By law of diminishing returns, continuous effort & investment in improving what is already good, whilst ignoring the rest, will increase the gap between the efficient & inefficient areas. Consequently these investments will struggle to deliver the planned benefits which will ultimately reduce the level of acceptance.
3. Loss of support & commitment
                                    This happens in two flavours. First one is very visible – this is when some of the key leaders and employees are frustrated and they move out of the organisation. Second one is a bit trickier to spot early on. This happens when some of the key leaders & change agents get promoted and the replacement, with no fault of theirs, does not clearly understand the improvements and subsequently starts to untangle the good work!

Now that I have explained both sides of the coin, what is expected of an organisation embarking on a change journey? The tip is simple but it needs extreme level of single-mindedness and focus – Keep fuelling the “heads” whilst not removing your eye off the "tails". And remember, tails is part of the same coin and heads can turn into tails if you are not careful. 

As always, I will leave you with one quote -  

“Once you start working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it” – Extract from Chanakya

So never quit, once you initiate anything and never quit, until the goal is reached.