This is a great list that change leaders and leaders in organizations undergoing change should have on the office walls and read every day.

I would also say that the change becomes challenging if it conflicts with the organization’s culture and/or reward system. This doens’t mean the change is doomed but culture and rewards must be managed every bit as much as anything else with the change.

Culture always wins, period. Any change that conflicts with the culture is doomed unless the culture also changes. Without managing the culture, the change turns into a management fad that will fade away. A well known OD practitioner gave me a great illustration of this once – a company known for its internal battles and infighting made an effort to hire people that were better at cooperation, thinking it would have an organizational impact and that people would see the benefits of working together. But the new hires soon left the company because they got beat up quickly and often. Their cooperative spirit was not aligned with the culture.

If the reward system doesn’t align with the change, the change is also doomed. Early in my career, I was working for a company that was owned by General Motors, the biggest company in the world at the time. Each GM business unit had its own way of cost accounting and the thought was a common system would be easier and more efficient for all. It quickly became a corporate joke because the accounting managers brought together to develop the common system couldn’t even define a “finsished product.” The oft-repeated sarcastic comment I heard was, “Don’t they know we make cars?”

But the problem was there were GM manufacturing plants that, for example, made nothing but transmissions. That was that plant’s finished product, not a car. And the plant manager and his team received their annual bonuses on how many transmissions were made, not how many cars were built and sold. And it would be a career-killing move for those plant accounting managers to sacrifice their boss’ bonus (along with their own bonus) for the sake of someone else in the company. These people had the authority to change the cost accounting system for the world’s largest company but they didn’t have the capability to change the reward system and the effort failed. (And, by the way, under the circumstances, I think the plant accounting managers were right! GM was telling them that building transmissions was so important, doing a good job of it will result in more money for those people and their bosses.)