A friend of mine consults with hospitals. At the end of a particularly grueling and frustrating engagement, I asked him over drinks what he learned. “All change,” he said, “and resistance to change, comes down to politics.”
I was reminded of the “four hurdles to strategy execution” from Blue Ocean Strategy:
- Political (opposition from powerful vested interests)
- Cognitive (organization wedded to status quo)
- Motivational (unmotivated staff)
- Resource (limited resources)
When I think back to the recent case study interviews for our Strategic Speed research, “resources” was often immediately listed as a “speed bump” in execution. When we dug a bit deeper, we got to more “cognitive” levels—people in the organization wedded to “the way we’ve always done things.” (One organization’s people went so far as to wear buttons that said “Status quo” in a circle with the line through it.) And when we dug deeper still, people would say, “Can you shut the camera off?” That was the good stuff, of course. Many times, political interests (perceived or otherwise) would be at the root. And the perceptions often impacted motivation.
So, I wonder: Is there a stratification of speed bumps that we need to dig down to and uncover when undertaking a new initiative or transitioning into a new role? Are there other layers beyond these four hurdles? What would the stratification look like at your organization?
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