“Know what’s weird? Day by day nothing seems to change, but pretty soon, everything is different.”   - Calvin of Calvin and Hobbs

Creating an organization that can successfully work with change does not have to be a cause of anxiety and uncertainty if your organizational efforts are informed and well planned and take into account the ways of behaving, producing and achieving of the people within the organization.

A common cause of change within organizations is the competitive need to improve benchmarks – the measurement of performance –so that the ways of behaving, producing and achieving of the people within the organization results in a successful business. Knowing what other organizations are doing successfully is a very small part of effecting change. You need to know what you do, your culture and values and where you want to go. You need to know what you are doing right and how the people within your organization can help you get where you want to go.

Before developing an implementation plan for a system change based on what another organization does, ask yourself – and your employees – questions like these:

• What do we know about our industry’s best practices and performance benchmarks? What do we know about industry and market trends?
• What are other businesses doing to be successful in our projected market environment?
• How does our culture compare with other successful organizations?  What similarities are there? What are the differences?
• Can we accept that we need to change? Will the changes fit our values and address future success? What are our expectations and description for successful change?
• What change are we contemplating? What issues does the change address? What is the timeline?
• Do we really know what it is we do now? Can we measure it? If not, how will we know what effects the change will have? How will we measure progress and evaluate effectiveness and timeliness of changes?
• How embedded are our existing systems for organization, communication, production and compensation? What effect will change have on our processes and procedures?
• How will such changes affect individuals’ performance and feelings about their work? Do we have commitment at all levels of the organization, across departments, within teams?
• Can we recognize when our plans aren’t working as projected? Are we flexible enough to make adjustments as we go along?

“You can’t expect to take benchmarks or best practices at face value. If you look only at organizational procedures, you will miss the point. You need to know about your culture. You need to understand how your systems have evolved and what your mission is. You need to understand the people-oriented factors that contribute to high performance before you plan to adjust the attitudes, skills and goals of the people in your organization.”

Murrell, Kenneth L. and Mimi Meredith, Empowering Employees (2000)

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