I have some big news to share! Beginning later this year (around August) I will be available to work directly with individuals and organizations on their change initiatives. While I don’t know exactly what this will look like, I do know it will look an awful lot like what I’ve been writing about in this blog for the past two years.

Starting with this post, I’m going to spend several blog posts sharing about this journey. For this post, I will focus on what industry information says about the failure rate of change initiatives and the costs associated with initiatives that don’t achieve the desired results.

Failure rate

While I was not able to find agreement on a metric or a common definition of “failure”, there is agreement that change initiatives often don’t do as well as planned.

70% is an often quoted failure rate, but this figure has been widely debunked.

Costs

While there are a lot of estimates out there, once again there is no consensus on a “what’s the cost when change initiatives don’t go well” metric.

According to Prosci, there are project costs and organization costs, including:

• Project: Project delays, Missed milestones, Budget overruns, Rework required, Loss of work by project team.
• Organization: Productivity plunges, Loss of valued employees, Reduced quality of work, Lost investment in the project, Lost opportunity to have invested in other projects.

I believe the negative impact that poorly executed change has on human beings is at least as significant, if not more so, than any financial impact. Also, the negative impact unsuccessful change has on future change initiatives cannot be understated.

I believe the negative impact that poorly executed change has on human beings is at least as significant, if not more so, than any financial impact.

Closing thoughts

I want to hear from you. What has been your success/failure rate with change initiatives? How have you defined “success”? What are some costs associated with less than effective change that you have experienced?

Please post your thoughts and comments below. Let’s help each other become the best change management practitioners and enthusiasts we can be!

In my next post I will tackle the question, “If change initiatives don’t seem to be going great, why don’t we change how we ‘do’ change?”

In the meantime, feel free to reach out! My contact information is in the Contact section of my blog. I would love to listen and learn about your change management needs and explore how I can be of help.

Thank you for reading. Until next time, take care and keep up the good work!

Mike