It’s cliché to say change is hard… but for many of us, it is. And the more people involved, the harder the change. The following 3 steps don’t make successful change easier, but they increase the likelihood of success – for the long term – ensuring that your change will ‘stick’ long enough to see a return on your investment.
#1: Set clear expectations. Define what success looks like. For fans of Steven Covey’s 7 Habits, he describes this as ‘Begin with the End in Mind’. Is success earning a 95% customer ‘willingness to refer’ score? Or is it seeing a 20% reduction in warranty spend? Whatever it is, make sure it’s measurable. Next, document the changes you intend to make – with specificity. Be clear about both what you plan to do, why you plan to do it, and why you’re choosing a certain path to get there. #2: Share these expectations with your team. Sure, start with your internal team. But don’t stop there. Homebuilders don’t build homes; trades do. Success often fails because key members of the ‘extended team’ aren’t involved in the process. Note the use of the word ‘share’ and not ‘tell’ or ‘communicate’ or ‘contract’. This should be embraced as an exchange of information, ideas, questions, and answers… to reach a shared understanding of what is expected from all parties involved. Remember, success requires engagement and execution from everyone, while failure only requires a lapse from one.
#3: Sustain results by monitoring. It’s a fact. People behave differently when they know they’re being watched. If you fail to monitor the result of change, those results may be fleeting. It’s hard to fire a shotgun and hit a clay pigeon. It’s exponentially harder to successfully hit 25 consecutive clay pigeons. It’s very rare that our definition of success is limited to achieving results once – one survey, one house, one quarter. No. We are striving for results we can sustain… community-wide, division-wide, and company-wide. Lastly, people like to feel like they are winning. Define your metrics for success, monitor processes, and share these results – good or bad – with all those who are effecting and affected by the results.
Set > Share > Sustain to implement change and Succeed.