1. Celerant: Economic Crisis Can Be Catalyst for Change
You can count effective organizational change as one of the positives
to come from the economic turmoil ofthe last18 months.More than
two-thirds of senior executives say the current global economic crisis
was a catalyst for driving change across organizations,according to a
recent global survey released byCelerantConsulting and the
EconomistIntelligence Unit.
“The crises of last year, and particularly the collapse of Lehman
Brothers, was a trigger point. We saw it with all of our clients no
matter what sector they were in. We saw some clients actually
embrace it,” says Bill Hendrickson, executive vice president of
Celerant Consulting. “There was no question that this time around people weren’t fighting the change. It was
all about saving jobs and survival. Those things get people’s attention.”
The survey—The Burning Platform: How Companies are Managing Change in a Recession—asked 561 senior
executives in Europe and the United States aboutchange managementattheir company.
“Clients thathad been trying for quite some time to get their people to embrace change had,all of a sudden,a real
burning platform,” he says.“It wasn’tjustcoming from the top, people feltit for real. This time,when executives said
they needed to launch a change program,people listened.”
Smartcompanies took advantage of the crisis to make change happen,Hendrickson says.But really smart
companies move fast“but do it systematicallyand make sure those changes are sustainable over the long haul,” he
says.“There is a danger, however, that firms are using the crisis to launch change initiatives too rapidly, with too
heavy a focus on short-term objectives.”
This is the second time Celerantand the EconomistIntelligence Unitconducted the survey. The first was in early
2008 before the economycollapsed. One of the key finding of the survey this time around, Hendrickson says, is
the increased focus on keeping to budgets and timelines of projects. In the first survey,budgets and
timelines ranked ninth in terms of project importance. This time, it moved all the way up to second. “That
really surprised me,” he says. “You can’t drag out these change programs, especially not now. Clients need
results, and they need these programs to deliver.”
Another surprising result,he says,is that 71 percentof respondents saythattheir companies are dealing with the
changes resulting from the financial and economic crisis,“reasonablywell,” while 8 percent believe that their firms are
dealing with the impactof the crisis “extremelywell.”
“Too me,that seems a little high,” Hendrickson says.“I guess itboils down to their own interpretation of success.
Some may think that since they’re still in business thatthey have succeeded.Butmany of them mighthave made
massive cuts justto keep the lights on.”
But some findings were consistentyear over year. The mostdifficultpart of any change managementprogram
remains winning hearts and minds.
Programs fail “when they are viewed as flavor of the month and not tied to the strategy.People need to know
why it’s happening and how they are going to be part of it,” he says.