Change is hard.
Most transformation efforts fail not because the ideas are bad but because leaders stumble along the way. If you are serious about change and in a position to lead, here’s what you need to know:
Finally, make change stick. Integrate new behaviors into onboarding, performance evaluations, promotion criteria, and storytelling. Ensure leadership succession supports the new approach.
Pitfall:|
Stage
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Actions Needed
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Pitfalls to Avoid
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1. Create a Sense of Urgency
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Examine market and competitive realities. Identify and discuss crises, potential crises, or major opportunities. Use bold, even aggressive methods to shake people out of complacency. Example: Share customer loss data, competitive threats, or financial projections showing the cost of inaction.
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Allowing Too Much Complacency: Leaders underestimate how hard it is to drive people out of comfort zones. They become paralyzed by risks or fear demoralizing employees. Example: Avoiding difficult conversations about declining market share because "morale is already low."
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2. Build a Guiding Coalition
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Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort. Encourage them to work as a team outside normal hierarchy. Include people with leadership skills, credibility, communications ability, authority, and analytical skills. Example: Form a cross-functional transformation team with executives, key influencers, and subject matter experts.
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Failing to Create a Sufficiently Powerful Coalition: Relying on a single champion or a weak team without real authority. No one with enough clout to overcome resistance. Example: Assigning change leadership to a mid-level manager with no executive sponsorship or resources.
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3. Form a Strategic Vision
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Create a vision to help direct the change effort. Develop strategies for achieving that vision. Ensure the vision is imaginable, desirable, feasible, focused, flexible, and communicable. Example: "Within three years, we will be the most customer-responsive company in our industry, with 90% same-day resolution rates."
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Underestimating the Power of Vision: Presenting people with detailed plans and budgets instead of a clear, inspiring picture of the future. The "vision" is too complicated or vague. Example: Sharing a 50-slide deck of organizational restructuring details without explaining why it matters or where you're headed.
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4. Communicate the Vision
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Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies. Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition. Communicate at least 10x more than you think necessary. Example: Town halls, newsletters, one-on-ones, team meetings, screensavers, posters—with consistent messaging about the vision and how everyone contributes.
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Under-Communicating the Vision: Sending out a single email or holding one all-hands meeting. Leaders don't model the new behaviors themselves. Example: Executives announce a "customer-first" vision but continue making decisions in closed-door meetings without customer input.
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5. Remove Obstacles
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Get rid of obstacles to change. Change systems or structures that undermine the vision. Encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions. Confront and deal with resisters. Example: Eliminate approval layers that slow customer response, update performance metrics to reward new behaviors, address managers who actively sabotage the effort.
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Permitting Obstacles to Block the Vision: Leaving old structures, processes, or leaders in place that contradict the new direction. Tolerating resistant managers who undermine change. Example: Announcing an innovation initiative while maintaining rigid approval processes that kill new ideas, or keeping a senior leader who openly dismisses the transformation.
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6. Generate Short-Term Wins
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Plan for visible performance improvements. Create those improvements. Recognize and reward employees involved in the improvements. Make wins visible, unambiguous, and clearly related to the change effort. Example: Launch a pilot program that delivers measurable results within 3-6 months, then celebrate publicly with the team and show metrics proving success.
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Failing to Create Short-Term Wins: Having no clear milestones or celebrating irrelevant activities instead of real results. Letting 2-3 years pass without proof of progress. Example: Celebrating "100% of managers trained" without showing any actual business impact, or setting only long-term goals with no interim victories.
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7. Sustain Acceleration
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Use increased credibility from wins to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision. Hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision. Reinvigorate the process with new projects and change agents. Example: After pilot success, scale to additional departments, tackle harder organizational barriers, bring in fresh talent aligned with new direction.
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Declaring Victory Too Soon: Celebrating the first major improvement as total success. Relaxing pressure before changes are embedded. Resisters regain ground. Example: After one successful quarter, leadership announces "mission accomplished" and moves focus elsewhere, allowing old habits to creep back.
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8. Anchor Changes in Culture
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Articulate connections between new behaviors and organizational success. Ensure leadership development and succession planning reinforce the new approach. Embed changes in values, norms, and practices. Example: Update onboarding to emphasize new values, revise promotion criteria to reward desired behaviors, tell stories of success that reinforce "how we do things now."
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Neglecting to Anchor Changes in Culture: Assuming new practices will stick automatically. Leadership succession brings in people who don't support the new approach. Example: New CEO comes in from outside, doesn't understand or value the transformation, and returns to old ways. Or, recognition and rewards still go to people exhibiting old behaviors.
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Conclusion
Transformation isn’t about flipping a switch — it’s about rethinking how your organization works, one process, one system, and one habit at a time. The most successful transformations happen when leaders see beyond the buzzwords and focus on redesigning the way work actually gets done.
That’s where process mapping, thoughtful technology choices, and strong change management make all the difference. They turn ambitious ideas into practical steps — and help your people feel confident navigating what’s new.
At Sympo, we help teams do just that: connecting strategy with execution, vision with workflow, and technology with the humans who use it. Because real transformation doesn’t happen by accident — it’s designed.
Contact us for an honest conversation about your business transformation needs and next steps. We are always happy to help.