Major organisational change should be avoided at all cost. It sucks up time, energy and emotion, distracts you from your main purpose, disrupts operations, annoys your people, undermines morale and rarely delivers the promised benefits. The statistics make grim reading; 70% of change programmes fail1, 75% of all re-engineering projects fail to achieve their aims2 and 83% of all mergers and acquisitions fail to increase shareholder value3.

Looked at another way, the world of work is shifting at such a mind-boggling rate that we have little choice but to continually change or risk being left behind. Information Technology continues to shrink the world and revolutionise the way organisations operate. Between the years 1750 and 1900, the World’s entire scientific knowledge doubled. Now it doubles every 1-2 years. In January 2008, there were 875 million internet shoppers worldwide4, in 1993 there were none. Success is no longer a matter of being the fittest or the smartest it is about being the most adaptable to change. Any enterprise that can introduce new ideas and new approaches frequently and effortlessly has a huge advantage. It is the role of a modern leader to make this possible.

Whereas organisations may have little choice but to change, people do. Large-scale change requires people to invest a great deal of energy and emotion in getting to grips with new methods and in living with extended periods of uncertainty. The role of a leader is to guide, support and sustain people through the trials and tribulations of change. Better still, it is to engage the enthusiasm and ingenuity of people in bringing about swift, painless and sustained change.

At the heart of the matter is the way we experience and respond to change. Extended periods of uncertainty, associated with any major change, cause us stress and anxiety. We are reluctant to let go of familiar things and to abandon tried and trusted approaches in favour of novel and unproven ideas. We like to feel in control of our destiny and hate to look foolish when struggling to do something new for the first time. We want to know where we are going and how we are going to get there, and when the ground begins to shift under our feet we lose confidence and find it hard to remain effective.

On the flip-side, we are capable of amazing things. We love to rise to a challenge and derive enormous satisfaction from overcoming obstacles and succeeding against the odds. We are innately curious creatures who enjoy exploring new avenues, coming up with better ways of doing things and learning new skills. So our response to a given change can vary dramatically depending on how we experience it and how we are led through it.

The key to success, and the subject of this book, is to work with the grain of human nature rather than against it. Like a master of martial arts, you must turn opposing forces to your advantage instead of meeting them head on. In short, if you can help people to become more certain, more in control, more connected, more purposeful, more confident and more successful during change then they will achieve extraordinary results.

This book allows you to learn from the successes and failures of others. It equips you with the understanding and tools you need to become one of those rare leaders who is able to bring about lasting organisational change with a minimum of fuss.

Change may be problematic but there is evidence of it all around us. The last hundred years has been unprecedented in the history of mankind in terms of the change that we humans have brought about. So what can we learn from people and organisations that have been successful in bringing about change? Who are the “heroes of change” and what have they understood about human nature that can help us achieve our goals?

One of the best known heroes of change is Mohandas “Mahatma” Ghandi who led the movement for independence for India from the British Empire through non-violent protest in the 1940s. One of the most powerful things Ghandi did was simply to embody the change he wanted to bring about. For instance, he dispensed with Western dress in favour of a traditional white cotton robe signalling his championing of ordinary people and an India built proudly on Indian traditions not Western values. One brief story illustrates his style of leadership. A mother visited Ghandi with her daughter and asked him to persuade her daughter to give up her habit of eating sugar as it was damaging her teeth and making her overweight. The Mahatma told the mother and daughter to go away and return the following week. On their return, he asked the girl to give up eating sugar. Her mother, somewhat put out, asked why they had had to wait a week for him to do as she had requested. “That’s because a week ago I too ate a sugar” was his reply. As he once famously declared, “We must become the change we want to see.”

The TV chef Jamie Oliver has, in his own way, become a hero of change. He made big news in the UK by working with schools, and eventually the British government, to introduce healthier lunches into schools in the face of rising childhood obesity. As part of his BBC television series, entitled “Jamie’s School Dinners”, he stepped into one school and worked with the head ‘dinner lady’ to prove that children could be persuaded to eat more fruit and vegetables and to give up fried chicken nuggets and chips. Once he had proved that it could be done in one school, he trained dozens of dinner ladies from other schools in the art of creating healthy meals on a tight budget that would appeal to children. One great technique Jamie used to overcome the reservations of a particular group of children who steadfastly refused to even try the healthy food was to get them into the kitchen and to teach them how to prepare healthy meals for themselves. By giving them a better understanding of food and a sense of ownership and control over the creation of healthy dishes they became converts to the cause of healthy eating. The important lessons we can learn from Jamie’s successes and failures are covered in Chapter 3.

Any parent who has helped a nervous child dispense with stabilisers and begin learning to ride a bicycle unaided is a hero of change. They know that any girl or boy approaching something they find daunting needs plenty of encouragement. Even the slightest improvement or momentary unaided pedalling needs to be praised to the skies to help them persevere when facing the perils of grazed knees and damaged pride. Without support through the initial wobbles the shiny new bike, bought at great expense, will simply gather dust in the garage. Self-belief is just as important for adults when trying out new things. People should be recognised for having a go at applying new working methods even if initial results are poor. They need encouragement and support if they are going to persevere through the initial wobbles and win through in the end.

Another unlikely hero of change was the person who tens of thousands of years ago invented ceremony. This may have been the first marriage ceremony or naming of a new-born child. More likely, it was the first funeral ceremony setting out the correct way to mourn the passing of a loved one. Something all ceremonies have in common is the ending of one way of being and beginning of another. There is within these ceremonies wisdom about the nature of how humans deal with change and an understanding that people have a need to mark the passage to a new life and new set of relationships. This understanding can help us in our quest for transformational change in the workplace.

On a different note, Martin Luther King, the great American civil rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s, dared people to dream of a day when people of different races and religions could live side by side in harmony. In his famous 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream”, delivered to a crowd of thousands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., he painted a vivid and compelling image of a brighter, more egalitarian future.

Here is an excerpt:

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.