5 Big change mistakes – 2 Not involving people

So often senior managers start working on change without involving the people who know most about what needs to happen and how to implement it.

Yes, sometimes you can’t tell people what’s going on for all kinds of reasons, but too often this is used as an excuse – or perhaps it’s just a habit.

If you can explain to people what you need to achieve to your team, very often you will be surprised at the ideas they come up with.
The change

In one company where I was working, during a previous and tough recession, we were really struggling. It may seem like a minor thing, but we, (the management team) decided that we just could not spare any money at all to pay for the traditional Christmas lunch normally funded by the company so we made a change and cancelled the event.

I announced this to the employees and apologised. They all knew how bad things were (sales had dropped like a stone, a familiar story).

The delegation

But later that day a small delegation came to see me. I was told that they had decided the Christmas lunch was too important for morale to miss. So they had decided it was going ahead.

They had already planned how they were going to do it with everyone making a small contribution and bringing in food.

The tradition

Part of the tradition was that everyone got a present from the company. So some money was scraped together through donations, enough for £2 per person.

One of the senior supervisors and I went into Nottingham and spent the afternoon getting a present for every single person, from the cleaner to the managing director. Each for £2 or less.

The successful event

The chief test engineer dressed up as Father Christmas and gave out each present after an excellent lunch that had not cost the company a penny.

It is still one of my most treasured memories. It made me realise what could be done if you just shared things with people and gave them a chance to contribute.

Include people

If you implement changes without including people you will almost always discover that things could have been done much more efficiently, better and cheaper if you involved them.

This is particularly annoying for those on the receiving end. In turn this leads to de-motivation and all kinds of other unnecessary problems. So why not save yourself the trouble?

For a summary of five big mistakes when implementing change see this article
5 Big mistakes to avoid when making change