Skip to main content

Building Commitment During Change

Because it matters

While developing change initiatives, a big question that we need to ask our selves is how will we address the question of "what is in it for me"? from the participants'.  

People do have passion to do great, but it is not always helping the organisation reach its goal. What people really have passion about is the quality of their own lives. By helping individuals see the direct personal benefits of the change initiative, provides a reinforcing energy for people to participate in the change. 

Howeve a long stading assumption that we are resouces first and humans next make sustaing change difficult. in the corporate world take the example of  the word Human Resources, The very word means that people standing in reserve. However when we aim for a large system change, the focus needs not on treating humans as resources but rather in harnessing the commitment, energy and excitement of organisational members. This commitment will naturally increase when people see their personal results from a change initiative; this in turn reinforces their investment and leads to further learning. If this reinforcing loop is not activated, a significant force for building momentum is lost and that is why most change initiatives fail to activate the necessary results, since they do not allow for learning to happen.

Hoever there are also challeges from enhanced personal results. First, comitmed  people differ from compliant people, they have their own ideas, passions, and this can be scary for bosses. Secondly as personal commitment increses, so too must the ability to set boundaries and make good choices. For example, a highly commitmed workplace can turn bad if ambitious people work so hard that they ignore health and well being. Lastly the larger organisation doesn't change because individuals in the change group are now behaving differently. Many a times these personal changes ( like being more enthusiastic) are not viewed as legitimate in the larger organisation and hence may not be discussed, undermining the entire change process

Thus for change to take place it is important that we look at what can be the personal learning and benefits that people can take out of it. This will serve as an important piece of energizer for the entire team and its people ,who after seeing their personal success in the change will participate in the chage more enthusiastically.

As system interventionists, it is important that we look at people in organisations as humans first and see how we can meet some of their most important needs, and then go on to plan and implement change initiatives.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reinforcing Loop in Action

A system represents a complex dynamic between its various sub-units. One of the most visible parts of a system is the reinforcing loop. The reinforcing loop is perhaps most visible because it works on an incremental basis. It is that fundamental element in a system that defines growth and increment. As defined by Senge, a system is said to be in a reinforcing loop when each small action builds on the other. This snowball effect of each action building on the previous one can either lead to a virtuous cycle or can actually lead to decline of the system. Most often reinforcing loop, perhaps because of it name, generates a perception of it being that element of the system that fosters growth, thus giving it a positive connotation. In systems thinking however, the concept is far broader. It refers to those elements or actions within the system that lead to amplification and maintenance of certain behaviours. This amplification does not necessarily mean that the behaviour that is gen...
2 comments
Read more

Foundational Structures of Systemic Thinking: Reinforcing and Balancing loop

A  reinforcing loop  is one in which an activity creates an outcome that impacts business as usual activity in this manner bringing about development or decay. The reinforcing loop is one of the two basic structures of systems thinking, the other being the Balancing Loop.  Because of the manner in which this structure reinforces itself it generally produces exponential growth or decline. This exponential change may be unnoticeable for a period of time until it reaches a certain threshold. The structure then seems to change very rapidly causing one to wonder how it began all at once, when in fact it really didn't. The growth just wasn't substantial enough to be noticed. A  balancing loop  tries to move things from the current state (the way things are) to the desired state (goal or objective) through some action (whatever is done to reach the goal). A balancing loop is representative of any situation where there is a goa...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to calculate ROI of Large system change intervention?

It’s true that companies spend a lot on large system change interventions; this makes it very crucial that companies are able to measure the added value. Companies always need to know if they are getting return on investment; even if we are getting ROI how can we calculate it? One of the reasons that ROI can be particularly difficult to calculate is the different factors that impact an intervention. These factors can be time and quality but are not essentially quantity and money therefore is difficult to put into a basic equation of: output / input equals productivity (output/input = value). Real problem here is that if we consider that if money as input, output will be money too. However this is not always the case in terms of large system change intervention. So how do we measure an impact which can be expressed as currency value? Calculating the full financial ROI of Large System interventions has been elusive resulting in undermining the perceived credibility of large syst...
1 comment
Read more