Welcome to the Harmonious Workplaces blog! We recently dedicated our 88th podcast episode to diving deep into case studies in successful Change Management (CM) and Organizational Development (OD). Organizational development consultant Rich Cruz and co-host Ben Kleinman reflected on critical projects to identify lessons learned. Looking back over the year, or any given period, to identify themes and takeaways is a natural and helpful exercise for change practitioners.
What is the one thing you can do now to help your CM or OD initiatives succeed? Keep reading as we unpack the critical themes, from defining scope to leveraging personality, that determine success in organizational transformation.
The Value of Learning from Flubs and Failures
While everyone enjoys the “hero’s journey” narrative of the change practitioner who saves the initiative, true learning often stems from experiences that didn’t go according to plan. We’ve all had experiences that did not go according to our best wishes—the “outtakes on the highlight reel of professional career life”—and these failures can be equally, if not more, valuable to learn from.
One crucial lesson relates to client expectation and scope definition. Ben Kleinman recalled a transformation project with a major pharmaceutical company involving numerous cross-business work streams (finance, HR, product delivery, plus pharma specifics like regulatory, R&D, and manufacturing). The project lead needed someone who “could see around corners”. After attempting to fulfill this role, Ben realized he had no idea what that meant and ultimately exited the project. This experience taught him that he works better with certain clients than others, highlighting the lesson that even experienced consultants must recognize when they are not the right fit. The challenge remains: how does a consultant acquire the skills to “see around corners,” or, as Rich Cruz mused, should one simply “bring [a] Magic eight ball” to predict the plan?
Finding Clandestine Behaviors and Organizational Complexity
Understanding the true state of an organization requires discovering what is hidden beneath the surface. This means finding clandestine behaviors and “looking under the rocks” to find hidden activities that impact change.
Rich Cruz shared a project experience involving change readiness for a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system at an engineering and manufacturing firm. Although the scope was focused on documenting processes and conducting change readiness, the discovery phase uncovered hidden organizational “stuff”. They found many little tools and informal behaviors people had created. The team realized they not only had to deal with migrating everyone off the legacy ERP system but also eliminating all these hidden workaround tools.
As consultants engage in dialogue and discovery, they frequently find unexpected stakeholders entering the equation, complicating the process. These cross-functional relationships and networks are helpful to understand but significantly increase the complexity of the change initiative. Tracking who holds power, who is the expert on which subject, and how those relationships influence the speed and tone of a change is incredibly difficult for an outsider to pick up quickly. Organizational dynamics are often “baked in” over years, and trying to untangle them in a short discovery period means you are “just scratching the surface”.
The Change Lead: A Driver of Project Personality
A powerful takeaway from consulting in industries like healthcare, pharma, and med tech is that the personality of the change lead seems to have a very strong influence on the personality of the change project itself.
Ben contrasted two different leadership styles he encountered:
- The Structured, Engineering Mindset: In a medical technology project focused on developing the next device version, the change lead was very fact-oriented, process-driven, and methodological. This mindset resulted in a change project structured around “innovation within structure”. While this made complexities easy to see, it made navigating them difficult because the plan lacked cushion for the “human side” and the many inevitable unknowns inherent in developing new hardware and software.
- The Knowledgeable, Less Structured Approach: At a drug-making company, the change lead was super knowledgeable but not as structured planning-wise. This change was excellent for learning, discovery, and bringing people along. However, the project lacked rigor, structure, and a clear plan to meet the delivery date, requiring external practitioners to impose time sensitivity and budget controls.
Rich Cruz analyzed these contrasts using psychological frameworks, suggesting the first leader aligns with conventional, investigative, and realistic preferences (scientific, risk-averse, focused on compliance), while the second leans toward artistic, social, and enterprising traits (innovative, informal). The key for the external practitioner is finding ways to challenge the lead’s work style in a “healthy, positive, psychologically safe way” to ensure both compliance needs and innovation/exploration needs are met.
Turning a Software Failure into Organizational Adaptability
Learning from a failure can sometimes lay the foundation for future success. Rich shared a recent “failure story” about a software rollout in a small firm. The firm had purchased software, but nobody was using it; instead, employees were using paper or creating their own tools. Although training was provided, nobody completed the initial online modules. Rich stepped in, delivered a new training program, and secured adoption, but the employees hated the system. The company decided to switch to a competitor’s software.
This failure had a redeeming quality: the processes and Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) learned on the old, disliked software translated very well to the new competitor system. The new system’s user experience (UX) was so much better that adoption happened organically, without the need for a third-party consultant like Rich.
This experience underscores the benefit of cultivating adaptability and resilience. Building this “change muscle” allows the organization to jump from one system to another with relative ease. When preparing for a change, it is helpful to consider what alternatives exist and how the KSAs learned on one system can translate to another from a risk management standpoint. Furthermore, Rich found success in using the vendor’s own jargon, learning tools, and cultural framework (e.g., Salesforce’s “outdoorsy” Trailhead theme or HubSpot’s informal style) to help integrate the new system’s culture into the organization’s communication and flow.
By studying these case studies—the flubs, the complexities, and the eventual wins—we learn that organizational change requires rigor, adaptability, and a deep understanding of the human element involved.
Ready to Learn More?
If you want to see more stories, go to the Harmonious Workplaces website. We have quite a few case studies available that show the breadth and depth of experience across many industries and types of projects.
View more case studies here: https://harmoniousworkplaces.com/about/case-studies/
Make Change Your Friend!
For more insights into organizational dynamics, be sure to check out Hermie the HR Hermit Crab comics and books, tune into more podcast episodes, and assess your current organizational health with our Workplace Culture Scorecard!
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