Change management: land a new strategy in phases and with support

The strategy has been approved, the kick-off went well and the slides are on the intranet. Six months later, sales still sell what they always sold and the bonus scheme still rewards last year's priorities. Nobody refused anything. Nothing in the daily work had changed.

Change management is the part of execution that closes this gap. Where strategy implementation turns a choice into goals, budgets and a review rhythm, change management makes sure people actually decide, behave and work together differently, and that systems, roles and pay support them instead of pulling them back.

Do most change programmes really fail?

The claim that 70% of change programmes fail has no valid and reliable empirical evidence behind it, according to Mark Hughes, who traced five published versions of it (source: Journal of Change Management, December 2011). That does not make change easy. John Kotter, who watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves, saw a few clear successes, a few utter failures and most somewhere in between, tilted towards the lower end (source: Harvard Business Review, March 1995).

The useful lesson is about where things go wrong. Change runs through phases that take time, Kotter wrote; skipping steps only creates an illusion of speed, and a serious mistake in any phase can undo earlier gains.

Kotter's eight steps for leading change

Kotter framed his article as eight errors that stall a transformation. Turned around, they are the eight steps most managers know.

Lewin: unfreeze, change, refreeze

Much older is the idea linked to Kurt Lewin, who described change in a group as a move from one equilibrium to another: the old level has to be unfrozen before it can shift, and the new level has to be frozen again (Human Relations, June 1947). Cummings, Bridgman and Brown argue that Lewin never developed the neat three-step model that carries his name, and that it took shape after his death (Human Relations, January 2016).

As a reminder rather than a recipe, the picture still helps. Before people move, the old way has to lose its grip. Afterwards, the new way has to be fixed in systems, roles and pay, or it slides back.

What the evidence says, and what Mintzberg adds

A review of the research on Kotter's model by Appelbaum and colleagues found support for most of the individual steps and no evidence against the model, but also no formal study that tested it as a whole (Journal of Management Development, 2012). Use it as a checklist of what must be in place, not as a fixed sequence to complete one by one.

Henry Mintzberg and James Waters add a second correction. They see deliberate and emergent strategy as two ends of a continuum along which real strategies lie (Strategic Management Journal, July 1985). Part of what works only becomes visible in execution. For change management that means leadership sets the direction and the non-negotiables, and lets the details emerge from pilots and from the people closest to customers.

How to roll out a change in phases

1. 01

   Diagnose

   Describe what must be different in daily work, systems, structure and pay. A check with McKinsey's seven-S model shows where the organisation does not yet fit the strategy.

2. 02

   Set goals and form the coalition

   Translate the strategy into a few measurable goals and bring together the people who can make it happen, including respected people without a senior title.

3. 03

   Pilot and learn

   Try the new way of working with a few customers, one team or one region, and measure what works before rolling it out.

4. 04

   Roll out through line managers

   Managers explain to their own teams what changes. A central project team supports them but does not replace them.

5. 05

   Anchor

   Change pay, budgets, roles, procedures and IT so the new way becomes the easy way and the old way the hard one.

6. 06

   Monitor

   Follow progress with leading indicators on the KPI dashboard instead of waiting a year for the results.

Resistance, middle managers and communication

Quick wins and lasting change

You need both: quick wins alone produce a good story and a relapse, structural change alone produces fatigue.

Worked example: a food producer moves into food service

Veltra Foods is a fictitious producer of soups and sauces with 90 staff. About two-thirds of its revenue comes from private-label products for two supermarket chains. To reduce that dependence, the board chose to build its own brand for restaurants, hotels and caterers, raising food service from 12% to 30% of revenue within three years.

Fictitious Firmfocus example.

After one year Veltra had 34 active food-service customers and food service had grown to 17% of revenue, slightly behind the path to 60 customers, so the coalition added a third account manager. Two lessons stood out. The feature customers valued most, the fixed delivery day, came from the pilot rather than the plan. And resistance in sales and planning faded only when the bonus and planning rules changed.

Small business or larger organisation

Pitfalls in change management

• Treating failure as destiny: the famous failure rate has no sound basis and hands people an excuse.
• Declaring victory too soon: one good quarter is not the new normal.
• Confusing communication with understanding: a kick-off and a newsletter do not change daily priorities.
• Pay that contradicts the strategy: people follow the bonus scheme, not the slides.
• Rolling out without a pilot: the plan rests on assumptions that only customers can test.

Change management follows the choice made in evaluate, choose and implement and runs alongside strategy implementation. The other execution topics are in execution and control, and the full overview is under Strategy.