COMPANIES, as every management consultant tells them, live in an
era of incessant change. But some are clearly better at changing
than others. Two new surveys suggest some reasons. One finds
that only one in five change-management projects succeeds. The
other shows that companies that are bad at change are far more
likely to use outside consultants to handle it than those that
are good at change.  When, late last year, A.T. Kearney (yes, a
consultancy) asked senior executives in 294 medium and large
European companies to rate their change programmes, only 20%
were considered a success. An astonishing 63% had made some
temporary improvement, but failed to sustain it. The remaining
17% had achieved no improvement at all.  This is an expensive
outcome, given that 90% of respondents said that cost reductions
were one of the main goals of change. A far smaller proportion
(27%) gave increasing revenue as an important goal. Craig Baker,
who leads A.T. Kearney's European “enterprise transformation”
practice, sees the