I’m sure I’ve written about this before but it’s something that’s always relevant and also something I’m keen to get right, but as is often the case with the business environs the massive variation usually means that not all approaches work in all situations.
The subject is productivity and staff happiness.
Mutually exclusive? I don’t think so!
I have mentioned previously that I feel I am a bad man because I make changes, I have referred to myself as an “agent of change” and also joked that I like it.
Well I do and I don’t.
I see change as a fundamental part of business continuity, business improvement, and unfortunately (for some people) times change, therefore businesses have to change, if they don’t things get stale.
The IT industry is often a high-paced developing industry, the balance of technology take up can be tricky to balance, do you become an early adopter or take a wait and see attitude. To me it’s much like saying I’ll check out the next version of Windows when the first Service Pack arrives. (A view taken by a surprisingly large number of people – for the record I’ll “test” as soon as I can, but may wait to roll out)
Our two main industries from a business perspective are Tourism and Transportation (Freight). The latter is quite straightforward, people want their goods shipped to and from the islands with the minimum of fuss and at the best possible cost. Our own process (generally) sits behind the shipping companies, the big players use us to link them to the islands, and they still “own” the freight whilst we transport it, and then we also handle native freight, where we are the provider.
The Tourism industry is a whole different prospect entirely – and don’t for a moment think I’m brushing off freight services with a sentence, it is involved, but the requirements are generally far simpler. Tourism offers many different problems due to the main random element – people.
Now – there is a school of thought that runs along the lines of “if it’ ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and that can be applied here. It must be great to go on your annual holiday to the Isles of Scilly and see the same guy at the same place, and some people will use a service for its familiarity – that can buy you support, but as time passes what is permissible changes, quite often changes are forced upon business.
Take identification as an example, for a long time id was not required with inter-country travel, I’m not sure if it even is now, but we ask for it, why? Because it’s another way of securing our services. If you go to Newquay Airport it’s a requirement, so why not Lands End, or St Marys at that?
But a change such as this can have an adverse effect, there is a thought that some couldn’t care less what you do as long as they get what they want, but that’s not good customer care, and that is a whole different blog post.
So my rather laboured point is that like it or not change will happen.
Now, bringing it back to my work, and the whole productivity and happiness issues, I have wrought many changes, some handled better than others, I will admit that, I am only human after all. But it is hard to see people struggle for any reason with change, everyone knows deep down that change is a naturally occurring thing, we all know of three certain things; birth, death and taxes, everything is can be affected by the unknown, or the unable to be controlled.
It’s that whole feeling of being unable to affect change that hurts. Makes you feel like you are being conspired against. But from the other side you can roll out the euphemisms as much as you like but the truth is that an individual’s mood and personal perception affects their reaction to change.
When we set about replacing our bookings and reservations software we had a set of boxes to tick, and when the installation happened we had a set of goals to accomplish, and when we trained our staff we had a certain level of information to impart.
What we didn’t do was follow through with our initial plan to involve the “user group” in more detail with the system. I had hoped that the wider group would “own” it and therefore become more comfortable and less sceptical.
I am aware of Kubler Ross and the curve of acceptance, studied it during the post-grad management course as it goes, but that only shows what happens if you let people work their way through a change. There’s no time limit – and in some cases acceptance can never really fully materialise.
I have been reading a book lately, http://amzn.to/hZzFAq and it suggests that by regularly taking small risks you become used to them and therefore less likely to enter a mode of panic when a serious issue forces you to take a larger risk. And this is very true of an unchanging situation becoming stale.
With individuals come egos, and as we all know even the tiniest ego can be bruised – I like to think of my ego as being a shrivelled up currant of a thing, so when I tell someone I am really great I’m being sincere and not up myself! (In truth that usually only happens in jest, I’m very modest normally)
So is that the answer/key? Keep the egos happy? Throw money at the problem? Get forceful?
There are many “tactics” that can be employed but I think the one thing that keeps coming back around time and time again is treating people like human beings, and giving them the time to digest, react and even affect changes that go on around them. Not in every situation can you put a decision out to wider approval, sometimes stuff changes because it has to, but you do not need to push that into people’s faces.
I do think there is some merit in the little and often approach, the Innovators Handbook approach of little and often, sure, that’s talking about risk, but can that also be reasonably applied to change? It’s something I will be looking at in the coming months….this will be a work in progress for me, if I find any guaranteed solutions I’ll let you know – I’m not responsible for any breath-holding injuries in the meantime!