Avoid the zombies, innovate for growth. This year’s results show an increasingly polarised marketplace, with top performers demonstrating an agile and ambitious approach to change. With additional resources available from their cost-saving programmes, there is an opportunity for high-performing organisations to reinvest resources in new strategies and innovative services which will transform their operations.
Since 2012, Moorhouse has conducted an annual survey of senior leaders on the challenges they face in implementing change. Our findings draw on the views of over 200 board members and the senior leaders that work most closely with them, from organisations across private and public sectors. Previous years have shown most organisations to be focusing on cost reduction programmes, supported by internal transformational change. Round after round of cost cutting has bred a number of ‘zombie organisations’, trapped by their own under-investment in both resources and innovation. However, with the economy moving from downturn to stability and now to growth, The 2015/16 Barometer on Change reveals an increasing emphasis on high performing organisations aspiring to deliver greater innovation and service-led change.