Case Study – Overcoming Organizational Inertia

Below you will find an overview of a case where LeverSource was used to overcome cultural barriers to change.

Situation

Turning a very mature IT organization that is playing not to lose into a revamped organization that is playing to win.

Complication

The organization has very long term contracts that are immune to economic downturns: there is no burning platform to change.

Approach

Interviewed over 200 IT employees. They surfaced 36 unique suggestions.  Using the LeverSource method each suggestion was analyzed against all other suggestions resulting in 1,260 comparisons. This analysis yielded the following insights:

1. 7 of the 36 suggestions were low leverage in nature
2. 9 were outcomes that could not be directly influenced but formed the basis for a tailored metric tracking dashboard
3. 17 were high leverage and should be the key components of an overall enterprise change program
4. 2 were strategic limitations to the organization actually changing

Leverage

Of the 2 strategic limitations, “Increasing Resource Control & Management” was the central limiting issue.  This was supported by the fact that increasing the individual control of resources, in effect, decentralizes the management control structures.  However, one of the prerequisites to achieving this was the need to increase “Leadership Training” which many felt was lacking in their current HR program.

Feedback

While the executive leadership were pleased with the rich picture of improvement opportunities, the employees were very excited by the opportunity to be heard without threatening their employment. While management thought their organization was “playing not to lose” in fact they didn’t have the skills to actually begin playing the game.