The announcement of a 60% price increase two months ago and the ensuing customer backlash eventually led to an email from Hastings to all Netflix customers – but in change management – that’s too little too late.

Here are several key lessons learned:

1. Conduct ongoing risk assessments of what could go wrong with the consumers and always have a mitigation plan.
2. Understand that no one likes surprises and introduce the changes accordingly – Netflix should have known that a surprise rate increase, a new company name, etc. was too much within a short amount of time.
3. Communications should be executed early on to gain buy in – Netflix could have offered an incentive to consumers to ‘make the change’ vs. force feeding them with information.

Although we can’t predict how the outcome would have been different if Netflix had managed these changes differently, it’s a lesson to everyone that managing change is more than just communication.

In the business world, we see this in another form:

Companies continue to pour investment dollars into change initiatives that either should be cancelled or delayed.

No one is weighing in on whether they are financing a “loser” and what the final outcome might be.

Knowing when to use a disciplined approach to cut your losses will:

1. Save you investment dollars

2. Increase the success of other business change initiatives currently in progress

In the words of Kenny Rogers, “you got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run”.

One detail you may have seen mentioned was the replica of Bin Laden’s compound built in Afghanistan that was leveraged for practices and dress rehearsals leading up to the raid.

Why don’t we leverage dress rehearsals when we are deploying change?  The Navy SEALS knew the value of this risk mitigation plan. They could test all the scenarios of what could go wrong and their recovery strategies.

There is risk associated with all change initiatives. Let’s reconsider how we approach the mitigation of all these risks and take the time to build in dress rehearsals to ensure flawless implementation!

Every investment in change in your organization represents risk. We are your insurance policy. We help you accomplish your objectives and ensure that your business transformation is sustainable.

Scenario:

You are receiving a report on the progress of a major change investment. The report indicates everything is in green status.  Your financial report indicates that your spend on this change initiative is now 80% of budget.  Sounds good, but is it really good and does ‘green’ reflect more funds will be needed as only 20% progress is represented in the 80% utilization of budget?

You are presented with a major change in scope for your change investment.  How will you go about making the decision to approve the change in scope without objective reporting of the progress to date, spend to date and the overall impact of the scope change to both?

Did you think about the cost of schedule slippage, the cost of personnel replacement, the cost of not managing your vendors, the cost of missed opportunities when you decided to do-it-yourself? The ABEO Group can demonstrate that the price is not the cost.