Lesson 4 – Success
Change often fails at the final hurdle. Take the example of Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow Airport; a superb building that it took a mammoth effort to complete. But, at the time it opened, it was seen to be a disaster with baggage going missing and all kinds of teething problems. For instance, passengers struggled with the self-ticketing machines and staff had not been trained to help them. A small oversight perhaps, but it caused great frustration and a lot bad PR for BAA. Too often, there is a lack of attention paid to the human side of change – like simply taking the time and effort to train people to be successful in a new environment leading to frustration and failure.
When organisations go through change there can be a tendency to think it’s all over when the change ‘goes live’ (e.g. when the building opens or the new computer system is switched on). But that is usually the point at which people have just begun the process of change and if people don’t change there is no change. Organisations neglect this fact at their peril.
In Jamie Oliver’s American Food Revolution there are some great examples of changes that failed even after people had assumed success. See Episode 5, Part 2 Jamie revisits the elementary school that had supposedly removed high-calorie favoured milk and a similar reversion to old ways takes place in Episode 5, Part 3. Take a look by clicking on the image below:
Success is vital to making change stick. If people are not trained, coached, supported and encouraged as they go through the learning curve they will give up when things get tough (as they invariably do just after a change) and the change will evaporate into thin air.
