Preparing Your Company For Change

Index

1. The Evolving Game
2. The Cost of Losing
3. Coach or Manager?
4. Choose the Playing Field
5. Know Your Players
6. Pick  Your Lines
7. Assign Your Captains
8. Draw Up the Game Plan
9. Play the Game

Pick Your Lines

Let's face it, not all the players on your team are going to show up on game day. That wouldn't be so bad if they just stayed home and watched the game on TV or went bowling, or something. But worse, in real life, in real business, some of these players who don't want to play will show up, just to disrupt the game or the other players. As the coach, you need to know who will show up to play, who will stay at home and who will come to disrupt the game. The first two types are okay. You need to deal with the third.

Understanding in advance what your best line combinations are can make a tremendous difference to your game. As a good coach or manager, you already know each player's strengths and weaknesses. One way to work around a weak line is to assign them specific expectations or roles that you expect them to fulfill. Not every line should be expected to score a bunch of goals. Perhaps one line needs to be a defensive line and another needs to be a checking line.

If certain employees are less likely to adapt to change, perhaps they are better off being exempted initially, while the rest of the workforce is integrated with the new solution. The key is however is to set the expectation and tell them what their role needs to be. Get them to buy in to the assignment. Then, when the rest of the organization has adapted to the new playbook and ironed out any wrinkles, let their peers bring them on-side.

The staged implementation of new technology works well with line combinations. Forcing a new way of conducting business upon the entire company at once versus inviting one or two lines to have the privilege of trying out some new plays is a completely different psychology.

Think about it coach...