Within organizations with a firm will to transform, there are many impediments that can weaken this will even before starting to develop an initiative.
The Income Statement
Although it may seem contradictory, the fact that companies have a positive income statement is one of the biggest obstacles to transformation. The axiom of "don't touch what already works" extends in most cases to the extreme of "don't do anything new". The excuses put forward for this non-doing can be multiple: it cannibalizes the customer base, it is not within the corporate purpose as a company, it can have a negative impact on reputation, etc. and others that generally show great resistance to change.
The organizational model
A common mistake in most organizations is to develop a possible transformation model on their own organizational structure. This is convenient since it requires no more than creating a higher or lower level department, but without going into larger issues and for which they are not prepared, such as:
- New circuits for the management and incorporation of people, approval of initiatives, control of service activity from both a technical and commercial point of view, presence and participation in opinion forums, agreements and partners, legal and intellectual property aspects,...
- New budget model, which combines both the commercial, promotional and technological part of an initiative as opposed to the separation in the traditional systems plan, marketing budget, etc.
- Model of objectives oriented not only to direct income, but also indirect business derived from new activities
Administrative Brake
An idea can be aborted, especially at lower levels, through administrative exhaustion. The tools that can be used to undermine the momentum of the same are multiple and, in addition, different profiles within the organization can request the same thing simply by changing their perspective.
The type of sentences that we can find are of the type:
- Explain it better through a presentation
- It must be ordered and coordinated with the business or systems plans
- create a government
- It is important to know how the market is through a benchmark
- For that we already have a plan in the department, we have to coordinate it
People
The human being, as is normal, has among his most basic instincts that of self-preservation. In the case of organizations, this translates into the protection of salary, position, and representativeness (de facto power) within the same structure.
When someone is threatened, even if the threat is not real, two modes of action are generally observed.
On the one hand, the simplest is ostracism. When the de facto power is sufficient, it is articulated through ignoring informal conversations with third parties, and it is articulated officially stating that the organization is involved in this or that project that is key and that it is not even the time for this type of initiative. .
On the other hand, if you want to block or make the project your own, you often use the crowd followings, in which it is summoned with. This is also supported under general messages like «let me help you put the organization on this line«. If the person, who is also the convener, attends said follow-ups, it means that she wants to make her own initiative, but if she does not attend, she intends to drown her through the alleged lack of interest or administrative exhaustion that we previously mentioned.
If any of this has happened to you or you know what has happened within your organization, share it with others.
