How many times have you announced a big strategy or organization change and just when you thought it was working it becomes obvious the change didnt happen? When your idea for a new significant change in strategy is still fresh and new, you must work to gain your organizations psychological momentum shift towards the idea. The organization hears your message from top to bottom and internalizes what the change means to them, how they might benefit from it, and what they might need to do to make it happen. Youve got everyone in the company talking about it. Your top management team are communicating and demonstrating their enthusiastic support. Indeed, all of your key leaders, including highly influential top performers are acting favorably toward the idea. If you are going to build momentum behind this change to drive it to its desired conclusion, then your work starts now.

The first one hundred days even the US President issues a 100 Day Report. Why? A common mistake that many leaders make is to announce the change, hear the instant positive feedback (ignore the naysayers input) and assume that the organization will take it from there. The truth is that the excitement reaches a plateau before the real impact of the change on each individual begins to set in. At this point, you could just as easily gain momentum and move forward or reverse direction and fail completely. This is the time for the idea to become a mandate: for it to take root with all the key stakeholders who need to be accountable for important elements of the plans success.

You cannot over-communicate, during this 100 day period, to the leadership team no matter how frequent and repetitive your interactions have to become. The more you communicate and the more you demonstrate that you are holding the key stakeholders and everyone in the company accountable for executing the change, the more likely the momentum will build in your favor. Have each stakeholder report frequently on progress toward achieving key milestones, even if the ultimate implementation of some of them will occur many months later. Progress reports should be both upwards to the CEO, and downwards to the employee population. This will serve to reinforce their commitment and also demonstrate their support to their peer group another important factor in keeping the momentum going.

Inertia is the enemy of change and there are three key powerful factors feeding that inertia in most companies. The first is fear of the unknown (aka whats in it for me?). If employees are uncertain about what this change will mean for them later on they will be reluctant to commit. The second is the fear of losing control. In every organization there is a political fabric that determines how things will get done and who will do it and even what things may get done. This political fabric is driven by the personal desires and goals of key individuals to gain more control. The fabric is powered by the network of people who stand to gain from the influence of the political leaders, or who cooperate out of fear that their positions will be threatened if they dont. The third is lack of leadership. When a leader embarks on a major change initiative such as entering new markets with new products, or to change the entire customer service orientation, or re-branding the company and its products - the change and the leader must quickly achieve a highly visible position as a mandate of the organization.

If the momentum on the project is not achieved and sustained through highly visible leadership in the first one hundred days, then the likelihood of its success will be seriously diminished. In all likelihood the changes needed to shift the operational and behavioral DNA of the company to your new strategy will not happen. The political network will slowly weave its web and reform components of the plan and shift the priorities of the key stakeholders back to their familiar fear-based roles. Your entire plan will slowly unravel. You may successfully implement superficial elements of the plan, so that external measures and positioning of the new process or function appear to be consistent with your plan. Employees will take their cues from their leaders, and if those leaders are working against your strategy their own behavior will fall in line with that. The result is that nothing more than lip service will be applied to implementing the new strategy.

How do you reduce the effect of the inertia forces to build and maintain momentum for the change?

First, create a plan that involves all of the key leadership up front. Get each of them to focus substantial energy over a period of just a few short months to achieving the goals of the change plan. Create an all-consuming short term project to reduce the opportunity for the political fabric to undermine your plans. Keep stakeholders very busy demonstrating to you and to each other that they are taking the steps necessary to plan and implement the change and becoming champions of the change with their employees. Dont give them time to evaluate or modify the goals of your plan based on their prior political ambitions.

Next, tie business operational performance and expected outcome based results measures to each stakeholders project plans. This helps them identify new metrics for their success that can only be measured if they successfully manage to change process to its desired conclusion. They will have no choice but to connect their success to the new strategy.

Then, involve key influential top performing employees early in the plan and get them similarly committed to the outcomes of the change. They will be your eyes and ears and feet on-the-ground to influence and keep the rest of your employee population on track. They will also help squelch the naysayer chatter and provide you with useful insights and feedback that you can act on to head off the development of derailing tactics. Consider adjusting employee reward and recognition and learning and development systems to help guide and direct employee behaviors that are consistent with your new strategy.

Finally, conduct weekly progress review meetings, including direct one-on-one interactions with the key leaders. Provide support and encouragement and maintain the focus on the goals of the program. Make the agenda of the new strategy and the project to get there more important and time consuming for a while than the agenda of the political network. After the hundred day period - when it is clear the program is being executed in a complete and thorough way, the emphasis on weekly review meetings can shift a little and spread out to monthly and even become integrated into the normal business and operational reviews. And of course, communicate, communicate, communicate.