News from the attic: Why change programs don’t produce change

Harvard Business Review November – December 1990, “Why Change Programs Don’t Produce Change”, by Michael Beer, Russell A Eisenstat, and Bert Spector. Paradoxically they then of course produce a recipe for an effective change programme!

Their research, however, showed that centrally imposed change programmes, specifying the details of activities were not effective. This could be addressed by concentrating on “task alignment” – reorganising employee roles, responsibilities and relationships to solve specific business problems. This needs to be done at the business unit level, and they suggest a six-step process:

1. Mobilise commitment to change through joint diagnosis of business problems
2. Develop a shared vision of how to organise and manage for competitiveness
3. Foster consensus for the new vision, competence to enact it and cohesion to move it along
4. Spread revitalisation to all departments without pushing it from the top
5. Institutionalise revitalisation through formal policies, systems and structures
6. Monitor and adjust strategies in response to problems in the revitalisation process

How does this look to us today, 20 years on? I’d be interested to hear from any change consultants reading what they make of this, and whether it matches their experience.

Calvert Markham