Crossing the Change Chasm – Succeeding in driving change

First of all, change is hard

One of the key success factors to any successful organisation change programme is getting all members of the team on board with the proposed changes. To most people, change is at best, difficult. It often means coming out of one’s comfort zone, often ditching old skills, roles and responsibilities that have served oneself well. All this is done in the quest of a better way of working, new business models, a new product strategy that cannot be proven to work as it does not yet exist.

As if this is not difficult enough, in most organisations a large proportion of the team members would not have had a say in the direction being taken. Nor would they be privy to the underlying drivers. Where there is such a lack of transparency, it is normal to consider whether underlying motives may exist. Are we taking on the latest digital transformation fad? Is the new boss just imposing change in order to set his mark? Will I lose my job at the end of the journey?

For all these reasons and more, it is not surprising therefore that many change programmes result in failure. Mckinsey (see here) estimates that 70% of change programmes fail.

Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors. They have included large organizations (Ford) and small ones (Landmark Communications), companies based in the United States (General Motors) and elsewhere (British Airways), corporations that were on their knees (Eastern Airlines), and companies that were earning […]

The Change Curve is not enough 

In order to model the stages through which individuals respond to change and uncertainty, management theorists have adapted the “5 stages of grief” model. Originally introduced by the psychologist Kubler-Ross, this explored how terminally ill patients come to terms with the experience of dying. The approach which sees individuals transition through shock, denial, frustration, depression and acceptance has also its relevance in situations involving other forms of change. When driving transformation and change, it can help change leaders understand the psychological context of how this change is being received, and help team members navigate the uncertainty, deal with the fact that in most cases, morale will fall, and then finally, hopefully, see the benefits of the change programme.

Understanding the Kubler-Ross Change Curve | Cleverism

Change is an inevitable part and truth of life, and there is no running away from it. If change is well planned and formulated, it can produce positive results but even in spite of planning, change is hard to incorporate, accept and appreciate.

However, in my opinion, the change curve, while useful, is not enough. Unlike dealing with grief, transformation programmes are collective experiences, and each individual will have a different predisposition to accepting, or indeed, embracing the change. One model that has served me well is to adapt the technology/product adoption curve. This, also known as the product diffusion model, or the adoption bell curve will be familiar to most managers and leaders in the tech space. This model was first introduced by Everett M Rogers and popularised in Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. It describes how new discontinuous (i.e. significantly different) consumer products or technologies are taken up by different customer segments.

These segments are categorised into psycho-demographic groups according to their willingness to adopt a radically new product. According to this model, innovators are the first to show enthusiasm for a new product, even it may be heavily compromised compared to the existing offerings. Early adopters also find it easy to relate to the benefits of the new product. They are followed by the early majority, who are more pragmatic but are happy to take on the new product and the promises of its superior benefits. Finally, we get to the late majority who lack the confidence with new technologies and so are very cautious and reluctant to jump on the bandwagon. At the end are the laggards, who will only buy into the new product if there is no alternative, for example, if their existing product breaks down and cannot be replaced with a like-for-like product.

Crossing the Transformation Chasm 

So how is this relevant to driving change and transformation? It is quite likely that the same thought processes and psychological dispositions that underpin the technology adoption curve also describe team members’ willingness to adopt change. We all know colleagues who willingly embrace change for change’s sake, as well as others who are positive but more pragmatic. Indeed the spectrum of personalities stretches out to the laggards, a perhaps rather disparaging way to describe those people for whom if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (I prefer the term conservatives) We can call this the Change Adoption Curve

Just as in the technology adoption curve, change sells itself to the innovators and early adopters. The challenge comes when crossing Geoffrey Moore’s famous chasm and take the change mainstream. Here you need to win over the pragmatists with the practical benefits of the change, explaining why it is their best interests to adopt the change being proposed. The bulk of team members will be in this group – they represent the mainstream thought. Fail to win them over and your change programme fails. As when adopting new products, the role of early adopters to help sell the vision and benefits, acting as influencers in their wider peer group is crucial. This is the main battle to be fought – win the early majority, and you hit the tipping point, the moment where you can create a sense of inevitability about the success of your programme.

The Change Diffusion Matrix

As useful as this model is to understand how to drive change, it feels incomplete to me. Unlike buyers of a product, those people who are asked to buy into a change programme can have an outsize influence on their peers. Many team members will likely seek the opinion of their peers. If there is a groundswell of support by their peers, the natural human instinct to conform will help your change programme succeed.

It is therefore useful to understand who in your team is ‘loud’ or vociferous – i.e. they make their opinions known and seek to influence their peers, and who instead is ‘quiet’, perhaps with equally strongly held views, but less likely to try to sway the opinion of the group. We can call this the Opinion Expression Curve – with those at the loud end keen to share their opinions, while the more quiet ones keep to themselves.

Mapping the Change Adoption Curve and the Opinion Expression Curve together gives a 2×2 matrix beloved of management consultancies. This can act as a guide on how to drive change in your organisation

1. Start with the Change Champions. These are not only your innovators, they are your influencers. They are willing to put their heads above the parapet, not only embracing change but acting as its champions, promoting it to their peers.
2. Bring as many Quiet Supporters on board. These will be easy to win over. If there are enough of the quiet and loud innovators, you may even be able to persuade a number of them to act as advocates for change.
3. Just as with introducing a new technology, so far you have only persuaded a small proportion of the team to come on the journey with you, perhaps no more than a quarter or a third overall, depending on how significant, or discontinuous, the change is. The mainstream in your team still needs to be persuaded. Now two tactics are needed.
4. Find arguments and methods to silence or bypass the Sceptics. They may not be persuaded in the first instance, as they may be hedging their bets on whether the outcome will succeed. Nevertheless, whatever you do, ensure that they do not block your initiative.
5. Then onto The Pragmatist, potentially the biggest grouping of them all, depending on the makeup and culture of your organisation. While you may have been able to win the hearts of the innovators, here we need to talk about practical benefits. What is in for them? Does the outcome outweigh the effort. The message is subtly different, more objective, less visionary.

So just as a product manager needs to find the way to cross the Chasm, so must a leader driving change appeal to the emotional and practical needs of the mainstream of his team. Focus on winning over just like-minded change agents, and your programme will be doomed to fail. On the other hand, successfully win over the early and late majority, and you will quickly hit your tipping point, and everyone, including the most die-hard sceptics will be won over.