People and culture still causing change project failures

Unsurprisingly, the research finds it’s all about people and corporate culture. Almost 60% of respondents said that changing mindsets and attitudes was the biggest challenge to implementing change, followed by corporate culture at 49%. Resources shortages and all the other problems, while not trivial, were seen as easier to solve. And the outcome: while 41% of projects were described as successful, the top 20% of the sample – referred to as ‘change masters’ in the study, reported an 80% project success rate. However, the bottom 20% – ‘change novices’ achieved just 8% success rate. Says Lawrence Owen, vice president of IBM Global Business Services: “Companies need to anticipate change and develop more systematic processes so they can tackle it quickly and effectively... The ability to manage change must be a core competency for organizations today.” IBM’s recommendations centre on spending time to properly understand the challenges, building structured change management approaches and engaging employees through involvement and two-way communication.