Change

Driving change in an established culture can be a tough task for any organisation.

Currently around 88 per cent of all corporate change projects fail (MacPherson, 2017). It doesn’t matter whether it’s a plan to enhance corporate culture, deliver a new organizational strategy, IT project, merger or acquisition: only one in every eight succeed.

With democracy in crisis, globalisation causing business disruption around the globe, and nanotechnology and Artificial Intelligence increasingly threatening the way we work leaders struggle to implement the changes they know are necessary. Typically, they’ll articulate their new vision, adapt policies and make the necessary new appointments – but still nothing substantive occurs.

So, in this chapter, we’ll consider why organisational culture is so resistant to change, and explore the best methods to achieve it – to make required changes actually take effect. In the fast-paced modern business environment, being able to positively effect organisation-wide change can spell the difference between an organisation’s success and failure.