Chapter 8 How to Keep Change Alive 125
sure that all this effort leads you to results. Finally, you must sustain these improvements over time. Old corporate habits die hard, and everyone needs reminders and reinforcement so that focus remains on continuing to get the benefits you need from this change.
Levels 1, 2, and 3 are just as important during this stage as in all the others, but they tend to get taken for granted this far along in the life of a change.
Level 1: People need information to do their jobs. This includes access to measurements and the numbers that drive their part of the business.
Level 2: People need to continue to feel the urgency of this change. If you are not careful, people will lose their emotional momentum. When that happens, people’s attention goes elsewhere and there is a risk that important tasks will get ignored or completed in a mindless fashion.
Level 3: People need to know that you are still 100 percent committed to this project (more about this later in the chapter).
The three levels are especially worthy of your attention because it’s likely that new people are coming onto the project and old people are transferring out. You’ve got to treat each of these shifts in personnel as an opportunity to make a compelling case, give them a history of the project to date, and let them know precisely what’s expected of them today. Vague generalities won’t do.
Taking the Tasks for Granted
What it takes to Keep Change Alive is a long list of pretty routine and not- all-that-sexy tasks. They almost seem too mundane for a real leader to have to pay attention to. They are pedestrian tasks. They aren’t a lot of fun to monitor. Success on any one of these isn’t likely to earn you standing ova- tions at the next corporate retreat. And yet these tasks are the very things that will support movement from Getting Started to Roll Out to Results.
My Suggestion: If you are good at attending to detail, then now’s the time. If not, delegate this to someone who is good at it and is excited about making