Why can’t we change our organizations? Year after year, the list of companies that no longer exist because they were unable to evolve continues to grow. It includes such household names as Sunbeam, Polaroid, Tower Records, Circuit City, and Drexel Burnham Lambert. After six decades of study, untold investment, and the best efforts of scholars, executives, and consultants, most organizational change efforts still underperform, fail, or make things worse.
This is bad news for 21st century organizations. Increasing competition, globalization, technological changes, financial upheaval, political uncertainty, changing workforce demographics, and other factors are forcing organizations to change faster and differently than ever before. Worse, there is little reason to believe the field of organizational change can be of much help. Not only is the track record of change efforts dismal — it may not be improving. Experts have reported similar results for organizational change efforts since the 1980s. Clearly, new insight is needed into how organizations can better adapt to their environments and change