Eventually, it all boils down to one question. What are you going to do differently? For an organizational change plan to work, it has to be driven down to the individual level. Until it does, it remains only a dream.
I was reminded about that as I was staring at a blank Personal Action Card at the end of a day-long planning meeting. Three hundred employees had just finished a four-hour strategy session to identify ways to decrease costs and increase revenues and now we were individually being asked to commit to four things:
- What can I do to save money?
- What can I do to support company growth?
- What can I do to help someone in another department or workgroup?
- What can I do to help myself?
I was surprised at how much trouble I was having at this critical moment in the process. Earlier in the day I had been very active with ideas on what the organization could do to cut costs and increase revenues, but now that it had gotten to a personal level, I was struggling.
Have you driven your organizational change down to the individual level? Are people ready to change? Have they committed to a new course of action? It’s not really going to happen until they do.
