Whyaddressthetopicofchangeinabookabout Strategic Relationship Management? Organizations invest huge amounts in tools, training, and thousands of books (over 83,000 in Amazon), but studies show a 60–70 percent failure rate for organizational change projects, a rate that has stayed constant from the 1970s to the present (Harvard Business Review).

It is our belief that within ten years most large organizations will have structured their relationship management. By then, it will be part of the day-to-day management, but until then, organizations first need to implement this new strategy.

The implementation of a well-thought-out Relationship Management Strategy is one of the most challenging phases. Strategy, structure, and culture support each other in our daily working life. It will not be enough to just change the strategy (or parts of it) and not support those changes in the structure (the working processes, combined with the necessary skills and systems) and/or the culture (our style and shared values).

Many people across the organization will have to be involved in the process of making changes, but not everyonewillbekeenon professionalizing the relationship management and having a clear strategy. It might mean that they will have to share their information about their relationships. Also people are not used to putting data and conversations in a database, and it might take some effort to persuade them to start doing so. Another issue is the organization's own networking events; it is not uncommon for employees to prefer to talk to each other than to clients. This also might require some effort to change.

The failure rate can be explained if we understand that it is not only our external stakeholders who want to be part of an authentic relationship; our colleagues do too. Kenneth J. Gergen wrote in Relational Being1 that we are relational beings and that “through relational coordination, organizations come to life.” However, most organizations are not applying that principle when implementing new strategies. When something like a Relationship Management Strategy is implemented, it is important to engage your colleagues.

So why is change so difficult? After all, there are many theories and methods that provide us with an almost step-by-step planning format.