Okay, you’ve done it. You’ve gotten a major marketing initiative approved and now it’s time to implement it. Leadership is on board because you used a group approach to arrive at the strategy, and now it will be smooth sailing.

Or will it?

According to Jeannie Daniel Duck in her book, The Change Monster, “When people — executives in particular — start a change initiative, they believe they understand what will be involved. But once they get into the process, they are always astonished at how muddled, painful, protracted, tiresome, complicated, and energy-consuming creating change can be.” This is true whether you’re changing manufacturing methods or the way you bring your product to market. A major branding or marketing effort will need to be understood and embraced by everyone in the organization if it’s going to truly represent the organization and its products and services, and this acceptance can be a huge undertaking.

In fact, study after study confirms that “most fundamental change efforts fail to accomplish what they set out to achieve — such as increased market share, higher stock price, faster and more innovative product development, lower costs, and/or entry into new markets,” according to Duck.

Why is that?

The answer that people are resistant to change is too simplistic an answer, however appealing. While it’s true that we are resistant to change, it’s also true that people go through all change in phases, and that just recognizing these phases can be immensely powerful. Change can be accomplished over time, and people can be brought to understand, accept, and embrace change, as long as you’re aware of what’s happening during each phase of the change, and realize that you’re not alone — and you’re not going crazy.

The major phases of any change initiative are:

1. Stagnation, where organizations may feel a lack of “buzz” in the press, a sense of status quo, with legacy products and nothing new to get excited about. Sales could be okay, but nothing to write home about.

2. Preparation, where organizations recognize the need for change and end stagnation. Roles are defined and plans are made.

3. Implementation, where plans are announced and things start to happen. This is when the emotions of threat, fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty that first appeared in the preparation phase are joined by confusion, apathy, resentment, inadequacy, and volatility — as well as exhilaration and excitement. During this phase, it’s important for leaders to help their people understand the overall plan, persuade them that it will work, motivate them to flesh it out, and work with them to execute it. It helps to identify opinion leaders and enlist their support, and work through them to influence the rest of the organization.

4. Determination, where the initiative is in the most danger of failing. If the other phases have been successful, leaders may take their eye off the ball just when their leadership is needed the most. This phase is critical because the results of the cumulative efforts should be evident, but the organization starts to experience fatigue and many want to throw in the towel. People at last begin to realize that the change is real, they too will have to change, and they long for an excuse to go back to the way things were. Retreat is very good at disguising itself as apathy, hopelessness, anger, cynicism, and even a happy face — a popular ploy explained as a need to get some normalcy. During the determination phase, people need to see successes. While a growth in sales or a rise in share price may be months or even years away, people on the inside want to be associated with success now – and this can be accomplished with small, daily successes such as a productive meeting, an order from a new customer, a word of encouragement, or a completion of a task. It’s extremely important to find ways to celebrate, no matter how small, during both the implementation and determination phases.

5. Fruition, where the hard work and long hours pay off. It’s important to stop and relish the moment, to acknowledge the hard work and success, and share the rewards.

Taking the phases of change into account and dealing with them effectively will greatly increase the odds of your marketing initiative succeeding with its objective. And you thought it was all about marketing!

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Marketing Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.