Defining Launch and How It Works

Launch means execution or implementation. Most organizational leaders know that grand designs and plans founder on crude procedures. Most change fails during implementation.

An OD intervention may take a long time to implement. It could take years. Milestones can be established to indicate what measurable objectives or goals should be achieved by specific points in time. But someone—and this is sometimes a role for OD consultants—must continuously facilitate the change, communicate about it, train people to perform the new roles they need to enact to make the change work, and address conflicts about the change that emerge over time. In short, a key secret to successful change implementation is continuing follow-up. If in real estate the saying is “location, location, location,” then the saying in implementing successful change is “follow up, follow up, follow up.” Someone must be following up with leaders and all other stakeholders, individually and collectively to keep the change impetus alive, to monitor progress, and to communicate about the change. An important point to emphasize, though, is that OD consultants serve as facilitators, not as the champions of change (an advocacy role usually played by senior leaders) or as “medical doctors” to do all the analysis and implement the recommendations (a role usually played by different kinds of consultants, not by OD consultants).

Perhaps the most famous change agent of all time was the biblical Moses. Imagine: Moses was able to get an entire race of people to move from Egypt to Israel. It took 40 years to make the journey.

That meant Moses started from Egypt with the grandparents and arrived 40 years later in Israel with the grandchildren! It is not difficult to imagine that every few minutes someone asked, “Are we there yet?” or offered such complaints as “I’m tired,” “I’m sleepy,” “I’m hungry,” “Where are we going?” and “Let’s stop.” And yet Moses led the people successfully. The moral of the story is that OD consultants must be like Moses and be patient enough to ensure that people are continuously reminded of why they are changing, how they are changing, what benefits are stemming from the change, why they should keep changing, and so forth.