10 critically important reasons why change initiatives fail

Leaders offer 'voices from the trenches' to guide improvement projects

By Clinton O. Longenecker and Thomas Litzinger

“Sometimes we are in such a hurry to improve things we have a tendency to push our efforts forward to change things too quickly which seems to always come back and bite us. If we are honest with ourselves, our improvement efforts frequently fall short because of this tendency, which is a very real issue in any place I’ve ever worked. As a leadership team, we are quick to highlight successful change and improvement efforts, but we rarely take the time to debrief when a change effort falls flat or outright fails. ... I can say from personal experience, there is much to be learned when we take the time to analyze a change effort that didn’t deliver the results we had hoped for. ... We need to get better at controlling the things that drive successful change and understanding the things that cause failure.”

— A senior vice president of operations for a Fortune 1000 manufacturing company


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