Challenges of change management and change management practitioners | UNSSC

The State of Change Management in the UN System survey sheds light on the range of challenges change management practitioners face, in their own voices.

Survey participants were not shy when responding to the open question on the challenges they face in the practice of change management: out of 104 people, more than 60 per cent shared their “biggest challenges”.

The most prevalent challenges reported are linked to lack of leadership support, change resistance, lack of alignment – between leaders, within divisions and of different organizational levels – and lack of awareness.

This qualitative content matches the quantitative findings from respondent subsets and individual questions sprinkled throughout the survey, namely barriers to change management maturity, change saturation and the number of concurrent transformation initiatives.

As the UN promotes and rolls out the Quintet of Change and UN 2.0-related activities, these findings bolster the argument for better integration of change management within transformation initiatives. They also signal the importance for change management practitioners to strengthen their portfolio management skills.

What are the biggest change management challenges?

Download graph as .PNG

In an open-ended question at the end of the survey, almost two thirds of survey participants shared their most significant change management challenges. They can be organically grouped by industry-accepted themes, triangulating findings from across the survey.

The most prevalent challenges are lack of leadership support, mentioned by 45 per cent of respondents to this question, and change-resistant culture, by 40 per cent. Other challenges cited include lack of alignment (23 per cent), followed by saturation and the burden of concurrent change, and lack of awareness, both mentioned by 22 per cent of participants.

Lack of resources and lack of experts and organizational expertise in change management round off this catalogue, each identified by 20 per cent of participants who replied to this question.

In the words of one participant, “bringing senior leadership attention and intention to the process v other priorities and change initiatives. Many priorities - capacity stretched and insignificant time and priority are given to learning and development and a continuous improvement process rather than one-offs or initiatives that are created but not linked or aligned to others”.

It is noteworthy to highlight that the challenges expressed by these participants correspond to the barriers to change management maturity identified by a self-selected group of participants, Change Leads - although these identify strategic shortcomings and lack of organizational buy-in as top barriers to change management maturity.

What are the Central Change Management Function’s greatest challenges?

Challenges listed by the seven participants who self-identify as leads for a Central Change Management Function (also called Central Change Management Office) and who answered this open-ended question, mirror those of the larger group of participants. These issues involve leadership, alignment and lack of vision and approach for change management. Issues also involve implementation challenges related to timelines and user experience, change resistance, and lack of human, financial and time resources.

Throughout the survey different questions, different types of questions and different subsets of respondents yielded similar answers. This consistency creates a solid tapestry and offers an accurate glimpse into the reality of UN change management practitioners, despite the participant sample size of the State of Change Management in the UN survey.

Other challenges frequently mentioned include lack of alignment, expressed by 23 per cent of participants, followed by saturation and the burden of concurrent change, and lack of awareness, both mentioned by 22 per cent of participants.

Lack of resources and lack of experts and organizational expertise in change management round off this catalogue, both identified by 20 per cent of participants.

Greatest challenges	Additional evidence from the survey
Lack of leadership support is participants’ biggest challenge	Lack of leadership support is the fourth highest-ranked barrier to change management maturity Only 29% of respondents say their organization offers training to senior leaders Only 20% of respondents say that senior leaders have a high awareness of the importance of change management
Change-resistant culture is participants’ second biggest challenge	Agility question Change-resistant culture is a significant barrier to change management maturity, as mentioned by 50% of respondents to that question
Lack of alignment is participants’ third biggest challenge	Organizational alignment is one of the most prevalent types of ongoing transformations across UN entities
Saturation and concurrence of change initiatives are listed as participants’ fourth biggest challenge	63% of participants say their organizations are nearing, at, or past the point of change saturation Per cent of organizations that have concurrent transformations
Lack of awareness of change management and its importance also ranks fourth according to participants	Only 20% of respondents say that senior leaders have a high awareness of the importance of change management Only 5% of participants say that mid-level managers have a high awareness of the importance of change management Lack of awareness is the fifth most prevalent barrier to change maturity in larger UN organizations