5Big Change Mistakes - 5 Not Learning from Past Changes

There can’t be many organisations that have not had to implement changes in the past. Unfortunately from the way some of them implement each new change, you would imagine that they have never done it before.

One reason for this is that many of the people who like and enjoy change are the kinds of people who don’t like planning and detailed careful work.

So they just go ahead with a change and, before the dust has settled and they have checked if it has had the desired effect, they are onto the next change.

Bad managers

There are some managers who are brought into a department purely to implement changes. You have probably seen them yourself.

I came across a particularly bad one recently. She had been rotated into a department to ‘gain experience’. She made a complete mess of it and left the members of the department not only to implement the changes but also to sort out all the extra problems she had caused.

The results of your work

If you don’t have to stick around to see the impact of your work, you can be left thinking that it’s all gone very well. So it’s really easy to make the same mistakes time and time again.

If you have to live with your mistakes you are likely at least to be motivated to do it better the next time.

Learn from your experience

Ideally you need to set out clear goals and objectives. Then make sure you have all the tools in place to ensure you can measure your results.

Yes, it does take time, but it means that, next time, you can do it a lot better.

What should you measure?

Identify what is important to you in this situation. When I was a production manager, the most important things were getting the output and keeping the quality up.

When we had to make a big change, these were the things we checked. By focussing on these, you can plan your change more effectively.

A difficult change

One of the most difficult changes I had to handle was when a very popular supervisor who worked for me retired. It was hard to imagine that anyone could fill Anne’s shoes. She was one of those ‘larger than life’ characters.

I had noticed that output was often reduced when the department lost motivation and suspected that people would be very de-motivated after Anne had left.

I was a very young and inexperience manager when I worked with her, and she taught me a lot. Even now, as I write this, I still feel tremendous sadness at losing her. Not only was she extremely skilled in her job, she was a great friend and fun to work with.

I remember her telling me that she bought her Christmas cards in the January sales every year. That probably gives you an idea of how much planning she did.

My plans

We organised a surprise party and all kinds of other events to celebrate her retirement.

But on top of this, I put a huge amount of effort into planning how we would keep up the output after her final day and keep up the motivation in the team. It paid off. In fact, the output was higher the week after she left than it was the previous week.

Out of respect for Anne, I never mentioned it. But I did learn that you can implement changes effectively if you learn from your past experience and build on it.

Christmas cards

Every year, as regular as clockwork, on 1st December I received a card from Anne. Then, about ten years ago now, I had a card from her husband saying she had passed away, a change I wasn’t quite as well prepared for.

For a summary of five big mistakes when implementing change see this article


5 Big mistakes to avoid when making change