Making It Meaningful

I heard a quote that went something like 'Only a wet baby likes change', a very true statement even though we are all involved in 'change' everyday.

An important aspect of change is to make it meaningful to the people involved - the old 'WIIFM' test (What's In It For Me?) - meaning that people immediately consider what the impact of the change will be on them personally - will it increase their wealth, decrease their stress, improve their working environment, stop them from doing things they like etc etc.

Any change that is imposed will generally fail to address these issues for individuals and result in CPF (Change Programme Failure) as individuals and small groups undertake guerilla activities to undermine the change and return it to the status quo. Even given this figure, something like 50% of change programmes will be substantially driven by managers, or worse, external consultants, forcing people to make changes they may not agree with and which have not past the WIIFM test.

To make change meaningful to people, they need boundaries to operate within, the skills and vision to enable them to create a mental picture of an improved process, guidance when they get stuck and the freedom to make mistakes on their journey.

Whilst this goes against many of the philosophies of change which focus a lot on ram-raids and detailed analysis by externals, it leads to change that people believe in - something they find meaningful.