Managing Organizational Change in Kazakhstan: In the rush to implement organizational changes, companies often don’t take the time to prepare their employees for change – and pay dearly.

In 2005 I had one of the most profound career experiences of my life. I was facilitating a Organizational Effectiveness project for a major California company in their Kazakhstan operation, and was holding a meeting on my second day on the job (on a side note, it was 120 degrees outside, and on its way getting hotter). In the conference room were about 20 or so employees of the company, from Europe, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, and the US. There were also about 5 interpreters in the room to ensure everyone understood what was being said and to make themselves understood. Not only was I like a “deer in the headlights’ from being across the globe literally in another world, but it was daunting to consider how I was going to ensure that all of these diverse individuals were aligned and in support of the goals of the project. Well, I could not believe what unfolded.

When I started talking about the project phases – everyone knew what I was talking about. When I spoke of process improvement – everyone had a basic understanding. When I talked about change management – everyone understood. Every member of the group was able to engage in a conversation on these topics (that is not to say they all agreed with what I was saying) because this company has invested heavily over many years in ensuring all employees worldwide were trained in at least the basics of project management, business processes and change. This amazing capability greatly accelerated the process of change with these individuals and these diverse groups of individuals simply because the barriers of a common language on issues of organizational change were eliminated. In this way we were able to focus on the challenges of organizational efficiency and finding solutions versus simply being able to understand one another (and overcoming all of the defensiveness that can emerge when people are unable to understand the languages of business process, project management and organizational change).

Building long-term capability for change is critical. But projects are not the vehicles for achieving overall organizational adaptability to change. The organization that I’m referring to in my Kazakhstan story understood this – and created an adaptable workforce over many years to the point that adaptability to change is central to its culture. Driving change through projects can only utilize existing capabilities of a company culture – they can’t be the vehicle to create it. They are limited by it. The cost of experiencing the same difficulties and expecting a different result is – as one executive put it – “the definition of insanity”. Companies, like the one I described in my Kazakhstan example, reap huge benefits from implementing the key elements for engaging all employees in being change adaptable. Sure, this is not something that will show benefits next week or next month, but the long term benefits are immense, and the implications of not doing it – are, well, are also immense.