The Horror - Article

8/3/2019 The Horror - Article

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Stephen Warrilow Lynton Glenthorne Ltd www.strategies-for-managing-change.com

Strategies For Managing Change - Articles

The Horror Of It All

A recent visitor to my website questioned me about the source of the

frequently quoted statistic that approximately 70% of all step change (i.e.more than incremental improvement) initiatives fail.

Here is a brief summary of a cross section of sources that I sent her and

that reveal the horror of it all.

A global survey conducted in 2008 by McKinsey & Company offered the

insight that organisations could only hope to survive by constantlychanging but approximately two thirds of all change initiatives fail.

In a recent 'Call for Papers' for the 'Journal of Change Management' (for aspecial issue entitled) 'Why Does Change Fail and What Can We Do

About It?' Professor Bernard Burnes of Manchester Business Schoolmakes the following observations:

'Whilst this seems to be a staggeringly high rate of failure, it is not out of

line with the rest of the change literature which regularly quotes failure

rates of between 60% and 90% (Burnes, 2009).

For example, Bain and Co claim the general failure rate is 70% (Senturiaet al, 2008) but that it rises to 90% for culture change initiatives (Rogers

et al, 2006)).

In the 1990s, Hammer and Champy (1993) claimed that 70% of all BPR

initiatives failed.'

According to 'Research Findings on Program Failure and Success' byPatrick Morley, Ph.D. Chairman and CEO, 'Man in the Mirror':


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'Two-thirds of Total Quality Management (TQM) programs fail, andreengineering initiatives fail 70% of the time (Senge, 1999).

Change initiatives crucial to organizational success fail 70% of the time

(Miller, 2002)'

A 'Computer Weekly' study (2003) on 421 IT projects revealed the

following:

16% of all projects successfully completed (that is they were deliveredin scope on time and on budget)

75% of all projects were 'challenged' in the following ways:

35% behind schedule 59% over budget 54% under-delivered on planned scope

A survey conducted by the Standish Group (2003) showed that 66% of

IT projects are either totally abandoned or fail against a measure ofbudget, scope, time or quality (i.e. challenged).

It has been estimated that the cost to US business of failing or abandoned

IT projects runs into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Closer to home, the UK Labour government have wasted 26 billions of

pounds on failed projects. An investigation by 'The Independent'

newspaper has found that the total cost of Labour's 10 most notorious ITfailures is equivalent to more than half of the budget for Britain's schoolsin 2009.

The world of mergers and acquisitions fares little better.

The 'value enhancement trend for 10 years of KPMG International'sM&A survey' shows that on average only 28% of mergers have resulted

in enhanced shareholder value, whilst an average of 36% have led to areduction in shareholder value. This value assessment is based on

company share price movements relative to average industry sectormovement during a two-year period.

Read them and weep

If you feel you have the stomach for it here is a selection of articles and

reports examining the catalogue of horror that constitutes the lack of ROI


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and failure statistics and reasons in so many - too many projects andchange initiatives:

http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/19584

http://www.it-cortex.com/Stat_Failure_Cause.htm

http://www1.standishgroup.com/newsroom/chaos_2009.php

http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/6840_f03_papers/frese/

http://www2.commerce.virginia.edu/cmit/Research/MISQE%209-05.pdf

http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/CIBIMA/volume1/v1n28.pdf

http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/the-business-impact-of-change-management/

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/gbe03100-usen-03-

making-change-work.pdf

In the film 'Apocalypse Now', the anti-hero Colonel Kurtz mumblesthrough the closing sequences:

...the horror... horror has a face... and you must make a friend of

horror...

Any impartial assessment of all of the main types of significant changeinitiatives reveals the sheer horror of the colossal human and financial

wastage perpetrated by organisational and political leaders.

The knowledge of how to successfully lead and manage change is outthere in the public domain in a growing body of easily accessible work.

So it must be an appalling combination of ignorance and arrogance that

causes the organisational and political leaders who preside over this litanyof costly failures to be so desperately under-prepared as they embark onfurther change initiatives.

Or has the marginal rate of increase in change now largely overtakenmany organisational leaders' capacity to deal with it?


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How to lead your people through change and manage the whole

messy business?

Practitioners Masterclass

http://www.strategies-for-managing-change.com/practitioners-masterclass.html

"...a richness of content that is seldom brought together in such an

integrated way..."

Change Processes That Work For People

Change Management Templates

http://www.strategies-for-managing-change.com/change-management-templates.html

Stephen Warrilow

Lynton Glenthorne Ltd2 Beach Mews

The Beach

ClevedonBristol BS21 7QU

UK

+44 1275 349878

+44 7860 215986

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The Horror - Article