Why your change effort may fail: What leaders of different types know

By Pam Fox Rollin, MBA, MBTI Master Practitioner^®

“What are you going to say when the CEO hauls you into his office,” I asked, “to explain why this change effort has failed?”

The change effort hadn’t failed. In fact, it had barely started.

30 executives of one of the largest private companies in the world were in the room. Their CEO had sent them to this private executive education program because they were about to undertake a massive initiative to change their global operations and corporate culture. The CEO was concerned that the “pessimism” in his leadership ranks might doom the program before it began, so sent them for a week of work on what it takes to lead change.

By the third day, they had much of the change mapped at a high level. They were wiser about proven methods for designing and cascading change. They had common language for strategic and technical change.

But the pessimism remained.

I asked each of them to jot down individually on a large sticky-note their thoughts on what they would say to their CEO 18 months from now to explain why this change effort failed. My colleague and I grouped their responses on the wall by Temperament, a lens which corresponds to four groupings of the 16 Myers-Briggs® types, which we had just debriefed with them.

Each Temperament group pointed to a consistent set of causes: The change program would fail because…

• We didn’t get the strategy right.
• We underestimated the speed of competitive change.
• We didn’t align all aspects of the new system.

• We weren’t clear about roles and responsibilities.
• We didn’t systematize the procedures.
• The change program was too fast and ambitious.

• We focused more on planning than doing.
• We moved too slowly.
• We bogged down in procedure manuals and red tape.

• We didn’t develop the needed competencies in our people.
• We failed to win hearts and minds for the change.

It was a powerful moment, as the execs realized some colleagues shared their concerns, and other colleagues they respected held equally significant concerns that weren’t on their own radar. They saw that by surfacing their concerns, they could work together toward mitigating those risks. And, they realized that they needed to listen to each other – and the diverse personalities on their teams back home -- to get the full picture.

The heaviness in the room dissipated. Pessimism morphed into curiosity and determination… “OK, how do we lead logistical and cultural change that meets all these concerns?”

What I say to client leaders is this: “Myers-Briggs is an excuse for a great conversation. Of the many tools I know, Myers-Briggs opens the group to each other’s point of view faster and more deeply than anything else.”

As you invite your colleagues to talk about changing your company, consider inviting them to enter as people first… as a diverse set of people with their own perspectives on change, culture, and risk. Type can unlock colleagues’ willingness to share these perspectives and sharpen the insights you all pull from your conversations about change.