Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance and other books on leadership and change, developed the Energy Bar™ as a free tool to help people in organizations get their ideas across in ways that get people committed and engaged. 
Rick has advised leaders from many countries on ways to apply this new tool successfully.
When we think about tough challenges company leaders are likely to face, we might think of slumping sales, falling stock prices, high turnover, or a public relations crisis. All of these issues can be detrimental to a company. I’ve been wanting to dig deeper to learn what else is keeping today’s leaders up at night. So, recently I gathered a group and planted a scenario to uncover what they were facing today.
Here’s the scenario.
With all the books, consultants, and decades of experience leading major organizational changes, I keep expecting the success rate of these major projects to rise, but the failure rate still remains high.
Back in 1995, when I first started writing about change in organizations, the failure rate was about 70 percent. In 2008, IBM conducted a major international study of C-level executives and found that only about 40 percent of those changes succeeded. In 2013, a Towers Watson study found a long-term success rate of 25 percent.
Have you ever participated in a meeting and there were no introductions?
What about those meetings where there is a back row of participants who sit quietly throughout and it never quite becomes clear why they are there?
I was working with a group of very bright technical experts on their strategies for building support for change. Lots of big words and lots of concepts being thrown around. We were all getting confused - and I do this for a living.
I stopped them, and said,” Look, it’s just energy. It’s either moving this way (toward support) or that way (into resistance).”
