Three Barriers to Change:
Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions by John Kotter
Within every organization there is an existing culture that can make it difficult to introduce change. Because the culture is intangible, it essentially lives within the attitudes, beliefs and values of the individuals that make up the organization, if the culture towards the change is negative, that will undoubtedly create hurdles that a leader must work to overcome.
Three Barriers to change
Communication is the top barrier to change in my opinion. For any change movement to work it cannot be kept hidden or only discussed between upper management. The change will take the entire organization to accomplish, thus the entire organization must know and understand the nature of the changes that are or will be taking place. What is often missed here is the importance of communicating the vision in a way that ignites excitement and compels action and innovation on the part of every employee. Leaders can largely overcome this barrier through showing the members of the organization appreciation as well as showing them how their contributions matter.
Lack of empowerment typically another barrier to change. Empowerment is such a crucial part of the change experience primarily because it encourages participation in shaping the future the individual will be forced to be a part of. Who wants to have something forced on them? So allowing each member of the team to feel empowered is critical and helps to ensure dedication to the process. Leaders can work around this barrier by allowing and considering contribution to the change process on all levels.
Complacency is the a huge barrier to change. As Kotter states in his book “Tradition dies a hard death.” When change is made, success is achieved. It is very easy for the same spirit of complacency to settle again. Allowing such not only kills the change and progress that was done, but also makes it more difficult in the future to bring about change again. A leader and the leadership team must continue to push the new habits or routines and the new vision. Leaders must achieve this by staying consistent themselves, by showing recognition and by continuing to push forth the same message.
Changing an organization is never easy. Although there are plenty companies to (and not to) model after, Leaders should beware not to follow too closely in another companies footsteps without having knowledge of the culture of that organization. The culture of each organization is the cornerstone to how they must approach their change strategy. The three barriers above can be found in most cases of change movements. Understanding how these barriers can potentially affect your organization will go a long way in creating a successful change movement.
~JMJ
We hope you found this information helpful. Please leave a comment below and share with other leaders.