Skip to main content

What if your team just don't understand the 'why' behind your changes?

Change can take a really long time for some businesses to engage with. I don't mean the kind of rapid change that our businesses need when things are going wrong, I am talking about the longer term improvements that we all need to engage with.

Do you ever watch your staff / colleagues agree to a new way of working, only to watch this approach ebb away after a few days or weeks?

There may be a million reasons why the change doesn't stick. I'm sure that you can think of a whole host of reasons just off the top of your head, I know I can!

But, what if a lot of these reasons boiled down to the fact that the people just didn't understand the change, in a meaningful way? What if they conceptually understood the request, but it had no value to them, that the reason was missing?

In lots of cases I have seen people have the 'penny drop' when the reason behind a change has been re-explained, often in a different way to the first time that it was previously explained. How many times have you re-read something, or re-heard something and had the lights come on?

It could be the same for our colleagues and our team. We might just need to spend a little more time with them, to make sure that they understand the rationale behind a change as well as the mechanics of the change in order for it to stick as an idea worth following.

As I said, there could be a million reasons, but this particular one - not understanding the meaning behind the change - might be a biggie!

When I wrote the book Losing the Cape I was partially talking to this crowd. The section on breaking down the business' improvement vision into meaningful chunks that people could buy into was part of this. This strategy works, could it work for you?

If you get time to reflect on the changes / improvements you have started but watched fall over in recent times ask yourself 'did the people involved understand the why of the change as well as the what?'

It is a common phrase that 'the reason makes all of the difference' and perhaps we can look at using this more effectively within our own improvement endeavours.

Food for thought!


Giles


About the author Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes. Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the 'Making It Happen' continuous improvement toolkit.

Popular posts from this blog

How to get started with continuous improvement

We all know that continuous improvement is a strategy that is essential for business. It involves constantly seeking ways to improve processes, products, or services in order to achieve better results and outcomes. However, for many people, the thought of starting on the path of continuous improvement can be daunting. The fear of doing it incorrectly or not knowing where to start can be overwhelming.    The key to successful continuous improvement is to start small and gradually build upon your successes. Here are some tips to help you get started if you are unsure of how to begin:   1. Identify areas for improvement: The first step in continuous improvement is to identify the areas that need improvement. This can be done by looking at the processes, products, or services that are not performing as well as they could be. It is important to involve all stakeholders in this process to gain a comprehensive understanding of the areas that need attention.   2. Set specifi...

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just  ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it...

Nail the number one improvement project

Over the past few weeks I have intervened in my client's continuous improvement programmes . I did this for one good reason: They weren't getting results. They caught the improvement bug, like so many organisations do. They got caught in the trap of wanting to change everything now! As I said, this happens to most of us from time to time. You start with some small improvements and you then identify more improvements you could get your teeth into. The next thing you know, you are trying to run ten improvement projects as well as deliver your day job. I know from bitter experience that this usually leads to having lots of loose ends rather than tangible increases in performance. So, what can you do about this? I know that with careful experimenting and resource management, you could find your sweet spot and figure out how many projects you can handle at once. Or, you can take the quick route and pare back your list until you have one priority. The one project that will give you t...