For many organizations, change can be a slow and complex process – an intricate puzzle of interconnected factors and the need to overcome ingrained cultures and processes that may be outdated but are familiar to the people being affected. Oftentimes, change means asking people to be uncomfortable, at least for a little while. You must anticipate and triumph over these challenges to get the crucial buy-in at all levels of the organization to successfully make the transition in a timely and cost-effective manner.

Read on to learn 10 factors that often slow the change journey – and to discover our tips for positively managing them.

❶ Resistance to change:

We love the familiar and comfortable. Adopting new habits may take some time since it involves rewiring our brains.

💡 Success Tip: Did you know that a lot of resistance can actually be predicted? Ensure that anticipating resistance and developing actionable plans to address it are part of your change preparations and plans. ORTEC will offer assistance to identify and navigate opposition.

❷ Organizational culture:

Does your company’s existing organizational culture unconsciously promote stability over innovation? Some companies aren’t aware of internal mechanisms that inhibit the change or goals they are trying to achieve. For example, you want to stimulate team effort and encourage people to collaborate, but you maintain bonus structures for individual achievement.

Leaders themselves can be a great obstacle to change because they underestimate the organization’s capacity to change. And they often find they are responsible for driving changes on top of their already busy day-to-day responsibilities.

💡 Success Tip: Ensure all leaders are aligned with critical mission objectives. An unaligned leadership team often leads to failure to reach the goals. It resonates throughout the company, disconnecting employees from a shared sense of purpose. In contrast, when alignment does exist, employees will find value in investing their time, energy, and talents into helping the project succeed.

❸ Complexity of change:

The more complex your change, the more it requires thorough planning, coordination, and execution. When you just start executing on your change initiative without the proper preparation, you may exert effort but find yourself heading in the wrong direction or encountering unnecessary obstacles along the way.

💡 Success Tip: Many companies face multiple obstacles due to lack of preparation. These obstacles may negatively impact sentiment and exhaust people to drive change. You need to enlist a partner to see you through this process and ensure you check all the preparation boxes.

❹ Lack of clear vision, engagement & communication:

A lack of a compelling change vision and inadequate communication will lead to confusion, lack of trust, and slower adoption by employees.

💡 Success Tip: It’s inherently human to want to understand why things need to change in order to adopt new behaviors or processes. Don’t just communicate what you’re doing – make sure you have a compelling and comprehensible “why” story – including the expected outcomes, benefits, and relevance to employees' roles in the change.

❺ Inadequate Resources & Support:

Many companies find change important but do not allocate dedicated resources to the change. Without the necessary resources to drive and support change, implementation may lag, and people become fatigued over time.

💡 Success Tip: To help smooth the journey, clearly define your change implementation team. Make sure you have activated everyone in the right role and help each person involved understand their specific role and objectives. And ensure that you have the budget in place to support the resources required to exact the change.

❻ Poorly defined goals & metrics:

How are you going to drive change if you haven’t defined what successful change looks like? How do you assess your effectiveness of change when there is no standard for comparison? Without defining clear goals and metrics to measure progress and hold your team – and yourself – accountable, moving forward will be difficult.

💡 Success Tip: As noted above, at this point you should have your team in place and taken steps to ensure that everyone is aligned. Be sure to include a couple of experts on the team who can provide insight on the current situation of KPIs and metrics.

Equally important is to remember to assess your Change Management performance itself. You’ll get valuable insights into the overall effectiveness at the time of go live. If you find an issue, it’s not too late to reassess and change course if needed.

❼ Change fatigue:

Change Fatigue can be an issue for employees who need to adopt the change, as well as for those who are driving that change. The result of multiple changes, or a negative legacy of handling change, without sufficient time for adjustment can lead to lower levels of enthusiasm and slow adaptation. This leads to reduced productivity and even turnover of staff.

💡 Success Tip: Communicate with your team so they understand the reasons for the change, the expected outcomes, and the personal benefits it will bring to individuals. Make sure you have dedicated resources allocated to do this critical task. Creating an open culture of communication for everyone to have a voice in the project helps increase engagement and support throughout the organization.

❽ Leadership ineffectiveness:

If leaders lack sustained active and visible project commitment, or don’t provide necessary guidance, the change process may face obstacles and delays.

💡 Success Tip: Are you aware of how people perceive you? Do you know what people expect from you during change? Finding out the answers to these questions and addressing them is fundamental to a successful process. The change starts with YOU. A good change leader serves as a sponsor throughout the project, not just at the kickoff. Be an agile leader and facilitator of change, supporting the project's lifecycle with efficiency and compassion.

❾ Individual differences:

Everyone experiences change differently and at their own pace; that means guidance requires individual adjustments for each person involved. Change may take longer for some team members than for others. Failure to acknowledge these differences and to address unique needs results in ineffective guidance that may derail your change efforts.

💡 Success Tip: Make sure your people-managers know what their role is in change and how to help guide their direct reports in change. Build a timeline that accounts for different ways of working and create checkpoints so that no one person takes on too much responsibility until everyone is comfortable.

Most training programs support technical learning. But the bulk of the struggle is the translation of training lessons to daily scenarios.

💡 Success Tip: Adjust your training beyond the classroom to support “real world” scenarios specific to your business. If you involve end-users from the beginning, they will help you prepare the right materials to support that part of the phase.

We've looked at 10 factors that can impact your organizational change journey, and how you can prepare for them. The pace of the change process is the result of human and organizational factors, including resistance, cultural circumstances, complexity, and the effectiveness of leadership. Which one of the above requires your attention? Successful change requires addressing each of these factors strategically and proactively to facilitate a smoother transition.