core sector communique

Overcoming the failure to pivot – the key to successful change in organizations

It is costly to organizations when they fail to change successfully. Over 70 percent of most organizational change initiatives fail. That failure is often mistakenly blamed on employee “resistance to change”.

However, two top organizational behavior experts say that the real reason is what’s called a “failure to pivot”.

Victoria Grady and James Grady, authors of the new book, The Pivot Point: Success in Organizational Change, say that organizations fail to change because individuals don’t change their behavior at the critical time or place. WHY?

Human nature guides us to do what we are familiar and comfortable with. To make change successfully we must be trained to do new things, new ways. We struggle with making the change until we are comfortable with the new methods, systems, or changing circumstances.

“It’s not just the addition of new, but it is also the loss of the old,” say the authors.

To achieve the change in an organization, employees must leave those familiar things behind, and at the same time learn exactly how to act and perform in a new way. The pivot point is that place in time and space when employees must abandon the old and adjust to the new.

The Pivot Point explains that we are all attached to “objects” in the workplace that we lean on or attach to for support in order to complete our day to day work tasks. An “object” can be a person, a technology, a system, a location, a process, familiar equipment, even an abstract concept or idea – anything that serves to provide an individual employee with a sense of consistency and stability.

The success rate of change initiatives can be improved by measuring and tracking how employees (real people) respond to specific actions during the change implementation process.

Navigating through organizational change requires training, patience, and encouragement. Most organizations fail because they don’t zero in on the people and the specific pivots they need to make. They just wish it to happen.

“Resistance to change” diminishes significantly when our human nature to form attachments is actively understood. Giving people open, clear and tactfully delivered feedback in ways that allows them to respond positively, maintain their personal pride, and develop comfort and confidence that they can do the right things without fear of criticism or pain.

Maximize the success of the change process by first understanding the people and then collectively the organization.

The Pivot Point

Victoria M. Grady and James D. Grady

List $14.95 (softcover) $7.99 (Kindle)

8 in. x 5 in. 140 pages

ISBN 978-1-61448-300-7 --- Paperback

ISBN 978-1-61448-301-4 --- e-Book

Morgan James Publishing