Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

We have all seen babies learn to walk. They don’t start with giant steps running around; they take small steps in the direction they want to go. Taking “baby steps” with organizational change is much easier than getting the organization to adopt your end plan all at once.

If you are trying to switch the business model from the annual tax return cycle to a smoother monthly service model, you wouldn’t announce to your employees and customers that starting tomorrow the business model has changed. That would confuse your employees and force customers to leave. The better approach would be to select some customers to whom you are already providing monthly services such as bookkeeping, payroll, accounting or general financial advice, and offer up a monthly all-inclusive fee. Once you get a few takers, you select an employee to manage it. After six months, you evaluate what worked and what didn’t. Then, you focus on what worked and roll it out to more customers/employees.

The book identifies many more tools upon which to draw, but hopefully this give you a sense for how to make change happen. Change is never easy, but in my experience it is the most rewarding work we do. It may be where we get uncomfortable, but it is also where we learn. So good luck implementing whatever changes you desire, and don’t stop singing that tune.