“An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project. […][Even] Small, seemingly minor hesitations can cause fatal delays” says Ben Horowitz in book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things‘.
I have the same experience and I find this quote very much to the point. In my executive and consulting years I have had much experience in large organizations of situations where an entire team wanted to change something, only to get rebuffed by a single person generally in a position of authority, or even a member of the team just not doing her work.
The decision to stop was generally taken for inadequate reasons – from selfish career considerations to belief that the person was more competent than the entire team proposing the change.
What should a leader do when a team comes up with enthusiasm with a proposal for a change that should greatly help the organization moving forward? In my view, give the keys and the responsibility to the team to implement that change, making sure that the interests of the rest of the organizations are protected. Empowering people is the best way to get great things done.
This bears a lesson for change managers – one of the most critical actions is to identify early those people that will slow down or even stop change. Sometimes they are easy to identify, sometimes they are hidden. Sometimes they are in positions of authority, sometimes they are not. Still they are always the cause for most change derailment in large organizations. Focus of change management should be to make sure they do not impede transformation.
