The success rate of complex organisation development projects involving strategic, structural, and cultural change tends to be low. Research by McKinsey suggests that only around 30% of complex change projects achieve their goals.

There are a multitude of reasons why this happens, including unrealistic aims, inadequate leadership or strong resistance from one or more stakeholder groups.   

The key factor for success, however, lies in the relationship between an organisation’s leadership and those responsible for designing and facilitating change. Transformation necessitates internal change agents, such as strategy teams, organisation development, communications, transformation experts etc., working with one or more external consultancies to help executives to lead change.

While expertise is important, the success of a project often hinges on the quality of the partnership between these different change agents and their client – the organisation’s leadership. In practice however, these relationships are at best tricky and at times dysfunctional, which can lead to problems such as an absence of leadership, resistance or political conflicts.  

So, what can be done to establish an effective working alliance between leaders, internal teams of professionals and external consultants?  

We conducted a unique study over a year, examining what goes on in the relational dynamics of complex strategic change projects. The article below outlines what we discovered and how best to address this collaboration issue. 

The Relational Triangle 

Our research highlighted how the relationship dynamics of complex transformation projects configure around a “primary client”. This is the person who owns the challenge allocate resources and make decisions. To take up a client role the individual needs to be open to change and willing to acknowledge their part in maintaining the status quo. The Head of Organisational Development (OD) at a global corporation involved in the study described this as being like “dancing in a triangle”, because it involved the ‘client’, the internal teams of professionals and the externals.  

Where and how it goes wrong 

We identified six scenarios that undermine collaboration which tend to occur when the consulting project is being established.  

  1. Absence of a primary client – In complex change projects identifying who is the primary client can be difficult or even contested. Yet effective collaboration requires clarity on who is in a leadership role and who is in a helping role. For example, the Operations Director initiates an operating change model with an external consultancy without first securing the commitment of the Chief Executive.
  2. A distant client – In other cases, a client can be identified, however, they have little or no direct relationship with either the internal or external consultants. Intermediaries may take on the role of ‘go-betweens’, communicating what they believe those in positions of power want or expect. This distance is often attributed to the primary client/s not having time or capacity.
  3. Internal consultants acting as the client – A scenario related to the above two points, this is when the internal consultants act ‘as if’ they are the client. Often this scenario arises because the internal consultant has taken excessive responsibility within the client system for addressing some underlying difficulty.
  4. External consultants bypassing internal teams – Internal consultants were quick to recount experiences where external consultants had entered their organisation at senior levels and overlooked or even actively excluded them. In one global corporation the Head of OD expressed a concern that a large consultancy had spread ‘like a virus’ through the system.
  5. Competing internal and external projects – We identified situations where the internal and external consultants were asked to work on separate consulting projects that overlapped and address interdependent issues. In one public sector organisation we witnessed a large restructuring project being undertaken by an external consultancy whilst the internal OD team was simultaneously running a culture and values project.
  6. Unrealistic expectations – The client and/or the internal consultants sometimes possess unrealistic expectations of what is possible and the capabilities of the external consultants. This could also extend to the external who may have unrealistic expectations of the other parties or indeed their own capabilities. 

These difficulties arise because of underlying ambivalences, vague expectations and avoidance of responsibility. They reflect anxieties around power, politics and status, fears around exclusion and rejection, competition and envy between the different parties in the triangle and differences around ideologies and beliefs. These emotional dynamics tend to be unspoken, or even unconscious, primarily because they are hard for people to acknowledge and explore. 

Increasing the chances of success 

Success requires a commitment to partnership and mutuality between the internal team, external consultants, and the client. At their best the relationships are open, alive and direct. Each party feels able to express themselves and feel heard by the others. This includes a shared commitment to jointly deciphering what is going on in their relationship.  

Early conversations set the tone for collaboration. When in doubt, consultants should ask these three questions explicitly of each other and representatives of the client system: 

  • Who is the primary client? 
  • What is the contract with the client and between consultants? 
  • What roles are necessary for success? 

The more complex the project, the more likely these basic questions take time and effort to answer. They also require the willingness of all parties to confront difficult issues not just in the organisation but also in their relationships.  

Effective relationships are established over time through ongoing three-way contracting. This includes being explicit about roles and renegotiating them as a project develops, and ongoing sense-making between the different parties around what is going on in the organisation and how this affects their relationship. To achieve this, all parties need to be willing to engage in clear, direct and authentic communication which is usually led by the consultants.

However, consultants must still be able to spot how dynamics arise and affect a change project and have sufficient skill in surfacing and exploring them with other parties to ensure more effective collaboration and better outcomes for all parties involved.  

Partner at 

Andrew is a consultant, facilitator and coach with over 30 years of international experience. He helps leaders to strategically develop their organisations by enabling individuals and groups to reflect and raise their awareness of what is possible, and to challenge them to make conscious choices about the future. A psychologist by background, he pays acute attention to the influence of psychological, political and group dynamics. Andrew has worked across a range of public, private and third-party sectors.

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