a colleague once gave me a story of change. He needed a site to fundamentally change from a site unconcerned by scrap and service to one that could predict output with great certainty and with minimum waste.
He recounted that after a year nothing really changed. Then he said they realised something that they coined the PICNIC effect wasn’t happening. If change was going to happen then the forces for change needed to line up to make it a picnic.
So the positive aspects of the change needed to go from positive and uncertain and in the future
“So The organisation will make more profit with this change, but for me how likely am I to see any increase in my bonus by the end of the year? )
And the negative aspects need to go from negative and uncertain and in the future
“So why should I bother risking my job improving things here – we’ve been doing it this way years and anyhow with my experience I’m indispensable so I wouldn’t be the first to go”
To positive immediate and certain as well as negative immediate and certain
“So every month we are going to be rewarded for savings we’ve created; my job description now includes a contribution to improvements. If I don’t provide ideas and support them to completion then I’ll be underperforming and ultimately lose my job if I can’t change”
And so an initiative that had stymied for two years turned around in 6 months. The site went on not only to outperform other sites but became a site that was known for coming up with great ideas that other sites used to improve their profits. A few people were problematic, but once the rewards started to flow peer pressure on non-contributors became dos sustsained that they began to leave.
And it made me think why smoking is so hard to quit from – the forces for are positive immediate and certain (aaaaah I remember the lovely feeling from the nicotine) with the forces against being negative uncertain and in the future (sure it may kill me one day, but I’ll stop way before then).
So if you line up the forces of change you’ll have a picnic 🙂