Change is a fundamental part of everyday life – after all, we’re all getting older every day.  However, most people crave some stability and consistency in their lives.  It’s sometimes seems like watching TV with one finger on the Play button and one on the Pause.

In working environments I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to be part of a successful company and most actively want to do the best they can.

So why do so many change programs run in to trouble and what can be done to improve the odds of success?

Well first off, the fact that we still call these things programs is a big issue.  It’s nothing special, it’s just the way we do things around here.  Until the habit of improving things is fundamentally built in to the culture there’s always a chance the ‘program’ will run out of steam or be taken over by the latest management craze.

There’s the next problem – management! Too often senior management see a change initiative as a campaign medal or a box to tick.  When the go to their networking events they love to tell other people the ‘we’re doing Six Sigma’ or ‘Lean’ or whatever.  The point of change is to achieve goals and unless the primary goal of the organisation is a plaque on the wall then it shouldn’t matter what the thing is called.

The key is to focus on that spirit in all of us, the desire to be part of something successful, and use the tools and techniques to reduce the fear factor.  While it is absolutely critical that the business overall has a vision what it’s seeking to achieve, each work team needs their own set of goals, that they can relate to, that they can measure progress towards and that will make them individually feel successful when they achieve them.  It’s the job of the change manager to ensure that the sum of all of the individual work team goals will add up to the overall business goal.

Confucius said A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step

Focus on what people can do rather than on what they find difficult.  Many organisations have wasted huge sums on external benchmarking and while this does have it’s place there’s usually much better learning close to home.  Why not simply make everyday a ‘best ever’ day?  Challenge the work team to describe their own best ever performance and then simply work at achieving that every single day.  By eliminating the causes that we’re stopping every day being excellent will inevitably raise the game anyway.  When the whole business is consistently achieving at internal best ever levels, then you can indulge in some external benchmarking – but I’ll bet people will actually be wanting to visit you on their benchmarking tours!