I’ve been involved in a lot of change efforts. Leading them, observing them, living through them. And that means I’ve been involved in a lot of do-overs. You see, in business, two thirds of change efforts fail. That’s a ton of do-overs.

Why the do-over?

Well, we’re doomed to do the do-over when we assume our people simply must change. (Hint: They don’t have to.) Our dogs “have to” do things if they want a treat. Our people can go somewhere else if they’re not interested in a change.

We have to do the do-over when we demand action first. Turns out, we need alignment before action. Without alignment, with our people going in every direction, we can’t lead them all in a single direction through a change.

The do-over daze distresses us when we use our everyday problem-solving skills—skills that have brought us success—to solve a problem leading to a change. A change is definitely not an everyday matter, and our people silently resist our change because they had no say in this work-altering initiative. We need to see change as something altogether different from the everyday.

We do the do(over) when our “deep business knowledge” blinds us into making one change even though our people—who know the depths of our business better in many ways than we do—could have told us what would have actually worked the first time. We have to recognize that our own business knowledge is almost certainly incomplete, not forgetting or discounting our people’s experiences.

The do-over is in-demand when we put process before people during a change. Problem is, process without people is pablum…it’s empty. We can’t fall in love with our process charts and think things are going to magically change—not without our people pulling with us.

And so on.

These days I work to help leaders avoid the do-over. That means I help them gain the self-awareness needed to avoid it…and to win at change. Winning is much more fun (and profitable) than the do-over.

Let me know what you think. I look forward to being in touch.

Al Comeaux