Case Studies

Oct 16 2009 11:49AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (3) |
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By Bruce Case

I don't know about you, but we have gone through tremendous change.  Change that I am excited about.  Yes, it was necessitated by the tough economy.  But 99% of it is the right thing to do - they are changes that will help us in the mid to long run.  They are changes that will help us work more coherently as a team and that will improve our client experience.

But wow, getting change to stick is hard work.  Any change is tough to get to stick - but I find getting detailed processes (our p's and q's) to stick is especially difficult.  It's tough to monitor on a regular basis whether team members are doing all the steps in the process.  It's tough for them to feel immediate positive reward(s) from new processes.  And it's not the type of work that makes me excited (or them) - yet it's critical to our team working effectively.

We did the "management 101" practices of getting input and buy-in on the new processes.  We explained the "why" behind them and gave folks time to get used to most them.  Even with those foundational elements, I find it takes consistent follow-up, reinforcement, monitoring and adaptation.  I feel like it's groundhog day - continually reinforcing the process, making sure it is being implemented.  If you feel the same - know you are not alone.  If you have the "magic bullet" please let me know....Otherwise I'll continue to push the wheelbarrow and I look forward to the day I can say the our processes are used 100% (or even 95%) of the time and folks truly get it....