Supporting Change
Has this scenario happened to you?:
Your team attends a workshop and you all get engaged and excited by the material and activities. Ideas are flying around — flip chart paper is being written on and getting taped on the wall — you all definitely have ideas you can see being applied to your business. You even make preliminary plans to implement some of these changes when you get back to the office.
You get back to the office and you talk about the experience some, but, as the experience fades into the past and the day to day needs once again dominate your attention, you gradually lose the vision and go back to your old ways of doing things. It’s discouraging.
And then… as you reflect on the experience every once in awhile you come to the conclusion that, regardless of how good it feels to attend a workshop or event, it really ultimately doesn’t change anything — so it’s a waste of time and money.
World class athletes aren’t made in a day. You don’t learn how to play an instrument and make beautiful music by attending a one day workshop. Making changes in how you do things as a team in your business follows the same principles.
To make change — you need to SUPPORT CHANGE. Here are a few ideas:
- Before you organize or attend an event ask yourselves — what are we trying to accomplish? What is the core reason we are doing this? To simply get away, disengage and have fun? (A GREAT goal, by the way) ; To address a key issue we are dealing with?
- At the event, decide how you are going to collect and summarize the information
- When you return, set up a meeting to debrief the event — extract any key learnings and decide what you are going to do to implement changes. Don’t force yourself to come up with things to implement here. It may very well be that you learned nothing implementable — have the courage to admit that and learn from it.
- For each change you decide to implement — DECIDE HOW YOU ARE GOING TO HOLD YOUR TEAM ACCOUNTABLE. This is one of the basic rules of goal setting — you can set aside a chunk of time in your weekly meetings to update progress.
- Treat the change implementation as you would any project — set timelines and follow them.
- Change is usually not easy — but if you get in the habit of holding yourself accountable to the goals of the effort, you’ll develop a wonderful way to keep your team and your business fresh.
I have lots more ideas that I’ve successfully used with many different kinds of teams including boards of directors, sales and marketing and finance teams — so I know they work. If you want me to help you plan a fun day with your team, give me a call.
Do you have some fun things that you do with your team that you’d like to share? If so, please send them to me and I’ll share them with this group.
