As Mayor Alvin Brown and his team work on a reorganization of City government, they might find some useful advice from leadership development consultant Hal Resnick.
Resnick, based in Ponte Vedra Beach, spent 30 years in organizational development and training.
Major clients included EverBank, Wachovia, The Haskell Co., Lockheed Martin and Shell Oil, among others.
Resnick wrote about “The Three Pillars of Organizational Change,” and if the findings hold true, the mayor’s office faces significant challenges to create a successful reorganization.
“The success rate of large-scale organizational change remains a dismal 30 percent, despite best intentions and efforts,” he wrote.
“The failures stem from either a lack of alignment at the senior level or a failure to fully understand and put into action all the aspects needed for successful change,” he said.
Resnick said in an interview this week that the findings also apply to government.
“They are absolutely applicable to government, perhaps more so, because of the additional complexity that people do not necessarily have common goals,” he said.
“The reason that it is more difficult in city government or in any governmental agency compared to a company is that in a company, people all have to agree on the common goals. They may differ in how to achieve those goals, but the goals can be agreed upon,” he said.
That’s not necessarily true in government, especially when many other agencies and organizations have some control over the reorganization.
“The other dimension that needs to be considered as an added complexity in the public sector is the change that is being confronted at the individual level,” he said.
Many of the individuals, he said, “are protected by civil service and are confronting situations that they have never experienced before.”
He also said that in private industry, typically the person heading the company has the authority to make the decisions about departmental change and to remove people who don’t agree.
In government, such decisions often need to be approved by other organizations, such as City Council or the state Legislature, as well as unions if the employees are members.
“It’s critical that people agree on the high-level goals of what they want without getting into immediate contentious debate about the methods or strategies to achieve them,” said Resnick.
He said that it was essential that “change be addressed with individuals as well as with institutions.”
“In the end, the change cannot be accomplished if people take fixed positions and refuse to yield from those fixed positions regardless of the reason.”
Resnick said government contention at the national level was recently evident.
“We saw most recently the worst example of that behavior at the federal level as our government became totally dysfunctional in attempting to address the issue of our national debt,” he said.
“In that instance, a very small minority of individuals on both sides of the aisle held the American people hostage to their personal beliefs and forced an outcome that achieved no one’s goals,” he said.
“If government is going to successfully create a positive vision and future for Jacksonville, it is essential that all parties learn from that horrible example and choose to set the interests of our City and our people above their personal agendas,” he said.
Resnick said that it’s most critical to approach the change systemically:
• Take an honest assessment of the current reality.
• Create a vision for the future that is clear, compelling and specific.
• Look at the major barriers to achieving that vision.
• Develop specific strategies to overcome those barriers.
• Align a critical mass of people representing various constituencies to work together to overcome those barriers.
“Then, look at the combination of structure, processes and people,” he said.
“In addition, it is important to recognize and celebrate the victories along the way so that people can see and acknowledge that progress is being made.”
Government can take longer to reorganize than private companies, however.
“In a system as complex as this City, this kind of change is a three-five year effort. That doesn’t mean nothing happens for three years, but it means change is only successful when the new way of doing things has become the natural way of doing things,” said Resnick.
“If change only exists when it is being imposed, that is not successful change because as soon as you remove the pressure, the system reverts,” he said.
“Becoming an embedded ‘new normal,’ that takes significant time.”
In his report, Resnick wrote that while large-scale organizational change is complex and challenging, “it is also absolutely achievable.”
“When an aligned senior team designs and implements the structural, process and human aspects of change, the success ratio is flipped from 30-70 to 80-20,” he said.
The key?
“This is one of the most significant contributions and responsibilities of the senior leadership team,” he said.
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